Guide: product catalog syntax

ProductCatalog reads a TOML catalog that groups purchasable products by ingredient name. The format is intentionally compact, but it supports a few equivalent ways to describe the same product entries.

Overview

At the top level, each TOML table is an ingredient name such as eggs or flour. Inside that table you can define:

• aliases: optional alternative ingredient names
• product entries:
  • keys can be any string except the reserved aliases key
  • each entry must include name, size, and price.
  • arbitrary extra metadata can also be defined

Catalog shapes

You can write product entries in either canonical nested-table form or dotted-table form. Both parse to the same catalog.

Canonical nested form

[eggs]
aliases = ["oeuf", "huevo"]
single = { name = "Single Egg", size = "1", price = 2 }
pack-6 = { name = "Pack of 6 eggs", size = "6", price = 10 }

[flour]
aliases = ["farine", "Mehl"]
01124 = { name = "Small pack", size = "100%g", price = 1.5 }
14141 = { name = "Big pack", size = "6%kg", price = 10, image = "flour.png" }

Equivalent dotted-table form

[eggs.pack-6]
price = 10
name = "Pack of 6 eggs"
size = "6"

[eggs.single]
price = 2
name = "Single Egg"
size = "1"

[flour.big-pack]
price = 10
name = "Big pack"
size = "6%kg"

[flour.small-pack]
price = 1.5
name = "Small pack"
size = "100%g"

Size syntax

The size field accepts either a single string or an array of strings.

Single sizes:

[eggs]
single = { name = "Single Egg", size = "1", price = 2 }

Sizes with a unit:

[flour]
small-pack = { name = "Small pack", size = "100%g", price = 1.5 }

Multiple equivalent sizes for the same product:

[eggs]
pack-of-12 = { name = "Pack of 12 eggs", size = ["1%dozen", "12"], price = 18 }

Metadata and aliases

Any additional keys on a product entry are preserved as metadata when parsing and are written back when stringifying.

[flour]
small-pack = { name = "Small pack", size = "100%g", price = 1.5, image = "flour.png" }

aliases belongs on the ingredient table, not on the product entry. It is parsed as an array of alternate ingredient names:

[eggs]
aliases = ["oeuf", "huevo"]
single = { name = "Single Egg", size = "1", price = 2 }

Full example

import { ProductCatalog } from "@tmlmt/cooklang-parser";

const catalog = new ProductCatalog(`
[eggs]
aliases = ["oeuf", "huevo"]
01123 = { name = "Single Egg", size = "1", price = 2 }
11244 = { name = "Pack of 6 eggs", size = "6", price = 10 }

[flour]
aliases = ["farine", "Mehl"]
01124 = { name = "Small pack", size = "100%g", price = 1.5 }
14141 = { name = "Big pack", size = "6%kg", price = 10, image = "flour.png" }
`);

const eggs = catalog.products.find((product) => product.ingredientName === "eggs");

If you only need a compact reference, the API page for ProductCatalog links back here.