create part database

[lugge]

At the moment, I make heavy use of spreadsheets to calculate various things for my KSP career.
I have spreadsheets for designing lifter/transport stages (get the cheapest or smallest stage for a given payload and deltav-requirement) or for managing my habitats (I use USI-LS), calculating the required habitation and fertilizer values for a given amount of kerbals and mission duration.
I'm also thinking about making a fancy GUI with python and Qt.

However, these spreadsheets need a part database.
For my deltav-sheet, I needed all data of the available engines and full tanks, so I opened KSP, went to VAB and typewrote all the data into my spreadsheet. Whenever I unlocked a new engine, I added lines to my spreadsheet.

You see, this is a lot of work.
And anytime a new KSP version is released, I have to check if some values changed.
I did this also for the USI-LS parts, which is even more work.

So, I started to look into the part files.
Sure I can parse these files, using python or something. But, there is ModuleManager which can patch parts during loadtime. And I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

Thus, which is the best way to get a database of all installed parts (stock and addons) and even consider ModuleManager?
Is there an library/API which would get me the needed information?
If so, I guess this cannot be achieved "offline" but must be triggered from within KSP as an addon, due to ModuleManager.
Any ideas?

[peteletroll]

ModuleManager generates a ModuleManager.ConfigCache file that contains all the info you need.

Edited May 17, 2018 by peteletroll

[sarbian]

MM has a callback for code to be executed after the patching so you could have your code generate whatever you need (csv, json, xml,...) or your could write an addon that runs on the main menu, or insert itself late in the loading process