Store file:values as list of dicts in Item properties

[duckontheweb]

Related Issue(s):

• Closes pystac.extensions.file.MappingObject doesn't work #605

Description:

Converts List[MappingObject] to List[Dict[str, Any]] in the FileExtension.values setter. Also adds from_dict and to_dict methods to the MappingObject class.

PR Checklist:

• Code is formatted (run pre-commit run --all-files)
• Tests pass (run scripts/test)
• Documentation has been updated to reflect changes, if applicable
• This PR maintains or improves overall codebase code coverage.
• Changes are added to the CHANGELOG. See the docs for information about adding to the changelog.

[gadomski]

👍🏽 to this fix, I just ran into this myself.

A more general question: since we're essentially rolling our own (de)serialization library here, is it worth making an explicit class (or framework) for a (De)Serializable object? There can be other little classes deep in extensions (like this) that it could be nice to not have to re-implement this logic.

[duckontheweb]

A more general question: since we're essentially rolling our own (de)serialization library here, is it worth making an explicit class (or framework) for a (De)Serializable object? There can be other little classes deep in extensions (like this) that it could be nice to not have to re-implement this logic.

Yeah, I think that would be useful. I started to play around with this a bit in #617, but haven't given it much attention lately. I think it would be useful to decouple the JSON serialization/deserialization from the links logic in STACObject so that we could re-use it in more places as you suggest.

[codecov-commenter]

Codecov Report

Merging #700 (04d6d28) into main (f68cf81) will decrease coverage by 0.00%.
The diff coverage is 95.45%.

@@            Coverage Diff             @@
##             main     #700      +/-   ##
==========================================
- Coverage   94.20%   94.20%   -0.01%     
==========================================
  Files          77       77              
  Lines       11120    11130      +10     
  Branches     1337     1340       +3     
==========================================
+ Hits        10476    10485       +9     
  Misses        466      466              
- Partials      178      179       +1     

Impacted Files	Coverage Δ
pystac/extensions/file.py	91.53% <87.50%> (-0.47%)	⬇️
tests/extensions/test_file.py	100.00% <100.00%> (ø)

---

Continue to review full report at Codecov.

Legend - Click here to learn more
Δ = absolute <relative> (impact), ø = not affected, ? = missing data
Powered by Codecov. Last update f68cf81...04d6d28. Read the comment docs.