Provide JSON export that puts items in a list

[machow]

Hey, sphobjinv has been a total lifesaver for understanding the sphinx inventory format, while working on quartodoc!

(cc @pawamoy, who I think might use parts of sphobjinv for mkdocstrings, though maybe just exports to .inv files? :)

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Currently, exporting to JSON format puts items on the top-level object, with number keys:

{
  "project": "nbformat",
  "version": "5.7",
  "count": 51,
  "0": {"name": "jsonschema.exceptions.ValidationError", "domain": "py", "role": "class", "priority": "-1", "uri": "api.html#nbformat.ValidationError", "dispname": "-"}, 
  "1": {"name": "nbformat", "domain": "py", "role": "module", "priority": "0", "uri": "api.html#module-$", "dispname": "-"}, 
  "2": ...
}

This works pretty well. However, it can feel a bit tricky to grab just the items, and the number keys feel a bit surprising.

Describe the solution you'd like

I wonder if putting items into a list might help with grabbing things / removing key entries?:

{
  "project": "quartodoc",
  "version": "0.0.9999",
  "count": 106,
  "items": [{"name": "quartodoc.get_function", ...
}

Describe alternatives you've considered

Right now, I use the current format and then process it to the proposed one 😅. This works pretty well, so I could see sticking with the existing format to preserve backwards compatibility.

[pawamoy]

@machow we actually don't use sphobjinv, even though it's a great package 😄
It was easy enough to implement our own inventory reader/writer, so I opted out of adding another dependency.

[bskinn]

@pawamoy Are there any custom formats that you're using in mkdocstrings that it would be useful to also have in sphobjinv?

Might as well maximize interop!

[pawamoy]

Not using it yet, but at some point it will be interesting to provide a JSON inventory, with more than just existing objects (and their relative URIs): I'd like to include each and every reference to these objects within the code base. Kinda like backlinks: object a.b.c is used in a.w.x and a.y.z functions. This would allow "Find references"-like features in static site generators such as MkDocs. It's really just an idea for now 🙂

[bskinn]

Ah, nod, could autogenerate an index, basically... or, at least an index of every cross-references mention. Would be neat to have!