When creating a KdlEntry with a string, it is unclear how to get v2 to use a multi-line string

[temportalflux]

When constructing a KdlEntry with a string value (regardless of whether or not that string contains a new-line), it is unclear to me as the caller how to tell the entry's format to use a single line vs a multi-line string (when that entry is turned into a string itself).

kdl::KdlEntry::new("Some\nmulti-line\nstring".to_owned()).to_string()

I'm hoping I've just missed something in my doc reading and experimenting, but it seems like KdlEntry::ensure_v2 is only checking KdlEntryFormat::value_repr, which has no user-accessible api for forcing the representation to some form.

[zkat]

value_repr is exactly what you want.

If you have an existing KdlEntryFormat object, you can get a mutable reference using https://docs.rs/kdl/latest/kdl/struct.KdlEntry.html#method.format_mut, otherwise you can just set the object from scratch using https://docs.rs/kdl/latest/kdl/struct.KdlEntry.html#method.set_format.

You update format objects by assigning to their fields directly.

In general, the easiest way to create entities in kdl-rs, like KdlEntry, is to actually use .parse instead of ::new. The former will actually retain the given representation, while ::new simply creates a plain argument KdlEntry with an unformatted value.

[temportalflux]

Thanks for that info! I think I need to learn more about the desired intent here. In my use case, I dont have a pre-existing kdl doc/node/entry to update, I always create them fresh from "primitive" values. So without understanding how autoformat and ensure_v[1/2] work, I would've expected that building an entry with a string value would've resulted in the format enforced by the kdl version;

let mut entry = kdl::KdlEntry::new(kdl::KdlValue::String("some long\nmultiline text\ndescription that is long".to_owned()));
entry.autoformat(); // or entry.ensure_v2()
assert_eq!(entry.to_string(), "\"\"\"some long\nmultiline text\ndescription that is long\"\"\"");

Instead, the to_string of the entry seems to output exactly what was provided as the string value ("\"some long\nmultiline text\ndescription that is long\"").

Even if I provide the stringified version of the KdlValue to value_repr when constructing the entry, I get the same result. I'm probably missing something, but it would be really helpful to have/know the API route to have kdl autoformat the node/entries to force it into the expected version format regardless of how the nodes/entries were constructed.

I think I'm mostly just confused about what the correct way is to construct string-value entries, without a pre-existing parsed entry, that would result in the various string-valued formats (plain identifier, inline/single-line string, multiline string, raw string).

[zkat]

As I mentioned, using parse is the best way to construct things in kdl-rs with pre-provided format. You’ll have to avoid using autoformat for now because it doesn’t preserve multiline strings

[zkat]

I'm gonna consider this resolved. Please go ahead and comment if you still have questions.