variabledecode

Keys (variable names) can have subkeys, with a . and can be numbered with -, like a.b-3=something means that the value a is a dictionary with a key b, and b is a list, the third(-ish) element with the value something. Numbers are used to sort, missing numbers are ignored.

This doesn't deal with multiple keys, like in a query string of id=10&id=20, which returns something like {'id': ['10', '20']}. That's left to someplace else to interpret. If you want to represent lists in this model, you use indexes, and the lists are explicitly ordered.

If you want to change the character that determines when to split for a dict or list, both variable_decode and variable_encode take dict_char and list_char keyword args. For example, to have the GET/POST variables, a_1=something as a list, you would use a list_char='_'.