def METHOD_NAME(self):
    """Return the contents of the file as a plain dict, or an empty dict if the file doesn't exist.
    You should generally not need to use this: this object can be used in places
    where dicts are expected (except if the file doesn't exist, then accessing it will throw; we
    can consider changing that behavior to always return an empty dict).
    """
    if self.exists():
        return self.access()
    return {}