Storing Dictionary (or Map) as Attribute in Appwrite Collection

Hi Appwrite Team! I have a collection to store information about users of my app, including name, username, and followers. The 'name' and 'username' attributes are simple strings, while the 'followers' attribute is of type String, but with Array checked off. That way, the 'followers' attribute stores a list of strings (other user ids who follow that user). That all makes perfect sense.

Suppose there is additional information about users that is stored in a dictionary (or map), like preferences.

userPrefs = {'likesDogs' : 'yes', 'likesCats' : 'no', 'likeChineseFood' : 'yes', ...}

Is there a way to store this userPrefs map as a single attribute in Appwrite rather than having to create a unique attribute for every key in the userPrefs map? Thanks for the help!

In reality, the userPrefs map I am working with has dozens of keys, with different data types as values.

Is best-practice here to create a separate collection called userPrefs and unpack the key, value pairs there? And then include a userID for who it corresponds to, so I can relate the two collections?

It depends on how you'll be using the data. If you need to query it, you'll need a collection. If you don't, you could store it as a JSON string