So apparently I’ve been doing way too much work with my flat file parsing of the Alsherok files. I forgot a very key component of my database of choice, PostgreSQL: ability to act as a non-relational database such as MongoDB while retaining the power of an RDBMS! I know, that last sentence is kinda geeky. Essentially, I just needed to grab the section I wanted, turn it into JSON, and shove it directly into the database. After that, I can call the data back out using a hybrid of traditional SQL such as:

Which brings back the fields

as expected.

I can even ensure uniqueness by adding a unique index on a particular branch of the JSON:

This provides a unique entry and fast searching because.. you know.. indexes and stuff.

Needless to say, I felt the need to refactor the other flat files I’ve finished and make them all spit out JSON instead of complex table structures 😉 Thankfully that went much faster than writing them originally. I may actually meet my end of the month deadline after all.