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Mathieu Kerjouan
Mathieu Kerjouan

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Map like Data-Structure in LaTex

#tex #latex

My CV is a mess, but I think almost everybody got the same result over time. Lot of experiences, certifications, projects and so on. Furthermore, having his CV in LaTex is great but it can be hard to update/upgrade it when needed... Why not using something like a database to store all those elements? Well, we can use another layer or tool to deal with that, but it seems LaTex can do that as well with the pfgkeys package.

The idea here is to create a really small local package offering an interface to store different kind of elements per categories. Let start with our requirement. How to put experiences?

\experiencePut{devto}{date}{2026}
\experiencePut{devto}{title}{author}
\experiencePut{devto}{summary}{Writing article for fun and no profit}
\experiencePut{devto}{location}{somewhere on the web}
\experiencePut{devto}{company}{dev.to}
\experiencePut{devto}{skills}{tex, latex, erlang, elixir, dart, flutter}
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\experiencePut is taking 3 arguments, the first one will be a reference to a position (e.g. devto), the second argument will be an unique keyword (e.g. date) and finally, the last argument will be the data to store (e.g. 2026). How to get this information back?

\experienceGet{devto}{date}
\experienceGet{devto}{title}
\experienceGet{devto}{summary}
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By creating experienceGet, where the first argument is the reference to a position (e.g. devto) and the second one to the unique keyword previously set (e.g. date). Then, it will return 2026. Neat. Right? Let create our local package called map.sty.

$ touch map.sty
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It will contain the definition of our interfaces and few mandatory elements for LaTex. Thanks to overleaf, we have now great LaTex documentation about that.

\NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}
\ProvidesPackage{mystore}[2026/07/24 map package]
\RequirePackage{pgfkeys}
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pfgkeys requires a list of keys to work correctly, then the /cv/ key is created. More information can be seen on the documentation regarding the family term.

\pgfkeys{
  /cv/.is family,
}
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Here the definition of the \experiencePut and \experienceGet commands. Both of them are some kind of interfaces to \mapPut and \mapGet commands, where the main category (defined in the first argument) is set to experiences.

\newcommand{\experiencePut}[3]{\mapPut{experiences}{#1}{#2}{#3}}%
\newcommand{\experienceGet}[2]{\mapGet{experiences}{#1}{#2}}%
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\mapPut command is using \pgfkeysetvalue to add a new key below /cv/, it requires 4 arguments, each one being a branch, and the last one being the final value to store.

\mapGet command is using \pgfkeysvalueof to retrieve the data stored on the leaves, based on the same principle than \mapPut.

\newcommand{\mapPut}[4]{\pgfkeyssetvalue{/cv/#1/#2/#3}{#4}}%
\newcommand{\mapGet}[3]{\pgfkeysvalueof{/cv/#1/#2/#3}}%
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That's great, be it could be even better if a command could be create to generate a short experience entry. In my case, the LaTex template was already using a definition for \entrylist and \entry. To avoid rewriting everything, let create a new command to generate an entry with the information stored.

\newcommand{\experienceShort}[1]{
    \entry
        {\experienceGet{#1}{date}}%
        {\experienceGet{#1}{title}}%
        {\textbf{\experienceGet{#1}{company}}, \experienceGet{#1}{location}}%
        {
            \experienceGet{#1}{summary}
        }
        {\experienceGet{#1}{skills}}
    % \\
}
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Now, let create a store.tex file, it will be used to store all our information in one place.

$ touch store.tex

$ cat > store.tex <<EOF
\experiencePut{devto}{date}{2026}
\experiencePut{devto}{title}{author}
\experiencePut{devto}{summary}{Writing article for fun and no profit}
\experiencePut{devto}{location}{somewhere on the web}
\experiencePut{devto}{company}{dev.to}
\experiencePut{devto}{skills}{tex, latex, erlang, elixir, dart, flutter}
EOF
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Finally, have some "fun" with our resume.

% header definition
\documentclass[]{cv-style}
\usepackage{map}
% ... other requirement
\begin{document}

  % import our stored information
  \input{store}

  % create a new section dedicated for the experience
  \section{Experience}

    % create a new entry list
    \begin{entrylist}

      % add the devto experience
      \experienceShort{devto}
    \end{entrylist}
\end{document}
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The best part of this approach is to be able to reuse the same information in many different kind of templates, without rewriting everything, every time. This is a really short part of my CV, but sharing this can probably help other LaTex developers to manage their resume. Even more, one can add multi-language support. Anyway, it's a nice way to deal with complexity in LaTex, if your CV is bigger than mine, the next step is to create a database and store everything in it. It's already in my pipes. As usual, some references.

Have fun and happy hack!

Cover Image by Victor Rosario on Unsplash

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