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A simple Gem to add YAML configuration files to your Ruby script / Gem.

Note : While this Gem is fully functional, the API may be subject to changes before hitting version 1.0.0

This Gem allows your Ruby scripts and Gems to save and load its settings to a configuration file in YAML format.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'confoog'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install confoog

Usage

Currently Confoog will not allow 'nested' configuration types, however each variable can be an array or hash so multiple settings can be recorded for each variable and accessed (for a hash) by settings[variable][hash_key] or array using settings[array].each. In other words, treat the return from settings[var] as the type it contains. See examples below.

By default, each time a configuration variable is created or changed the file on disk will be updated with this addition or change. If you intend to make a lot of consecutive changes or do not want the small performance hit of this, pass autosave: false as a parameter to #new, or set it false using the #autosave accessor.

require 'confoog'

settings = Confoog::Settings.new
settings[:var] = value
settings[:array] = [1, 2, 3, 4]
settings[42] = "Meaning of life"
settings[:urls] = ["https://www.mywebsite.com", "https://www.anothersite.com/a/page.html"]

settings[:urls].each do |url|
  puts url
end
# https://www.mywebsite.com
# https://www.anothersite.com/a/page.html
# => ["https://www.mywebsite.com", "https://www.anothersite.com/a/page.html"]

settings[:dont_exist]
# => nil

a_variable = 50
settings[a_variable] = {:one => "for the money", :two => "for the show", :three => "to get ready"}
settings[50]
# => {:one=>"for the money", :two=>"for the show", :three=>"to get ready"}
settings[50][:two]
# => "for the show"

settings.quiet = true # squelch any error or status messages to console

settings.autosave = false # disable autosave if it has been enabled with #new or #autosave

settings.save # save all current parameters to the YAML file

settings.load # load the settings from YAML file.

Confoog will take several parameters on creation, to specify the default config file and location. For example :

settings = Confoog::Settings.new(location: '/home/myuser', filename: '.foo-settings')

There are other optional flags or variables that can be passed on creation:

# Should a missing configuration file be created or not
create_file: true | false

# Specify an optional prefix before any error messages
prefix: 'My Application'

# Should we avoid outputting errors to the console? (ie in a GUI app)
quiet: true | false

# Should we automatically load the configuration file when the class is created?
autoload: true | false

# Should we automatically save the configuration file when a variable is created or changed?
autosave: true | false

If any of these are not specified, Confoog will use the following defaults :

location: '~/'
filename: '.confoog'
create_file: false
prefix: 'Configuration'
quiet: false
autoload: false
autosave: true

Confoog will set the following error constants which will be returned in the .status['errors'] variable as needed :

ERR_NO_ERROR = 0 # no error condition, command was succesfull
ERR_FILE_NOT_EXIST = 1 # specified configuration file does not exist
ERR_CANT_CREATE_FILE = 2 # cannot create the requested configuration file
ERR_NOT_WRITING_EMPTY_FILE = 4 # not attempting to save an empty configuration
ERR_CANT_SAVE_CONFIGURATION = 8 # Failed to save the configuration file
ERR_NOT_LOADING_EMPTY_FILE = 16 # not atempting to load an empty config file
ERR_CANT_LOAD = 32 # Cannot load configuration data from file.

INFO_FILE_CREATED = 256 # Information - specified file was created
INFO_FILE_LOADED = 512 # Information - Config file was loaded successfully

These are generally to do with existence and creation of configuration files.

To Do

Thoughts in no particular order.

  • Restrict configuration variables to a specified subset, or to only those that already exist in the YAML file.
  • A better way of dealing with multi-level variables - i.e. nested arrays, hashes etc.
  • Write standalone tests for the 'Status' class - right now it is tested at 100% by the application tests though would probably be good to have dedicated tests too
  • Check Windows compatibility, certainly at least the tests will fail since there are issue with FakeFS on Window. Should be ok as a production Gem though (TBC)
  • Add other file formats for storing config - XML? (Yuk!)
  • Document properly on a dedicated website with full example usage and help.

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests (or simply rake). You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install.

Run rake to run the RSpec tests, which also runs RuboCop, Reek and inch --pedantic too.

Contributing

  1. Fork it
  2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
  3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
  4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
  5. Create new Pull Request

Please note - This Gem currently passes 100% on RuboCop, Reek and Inch-CI (on pedantic mode), so all pull requests should do likewise. Ask for guidance if needed. Running rake will automatically test all 3 of those along with the RSpec tests. Note that Failures of Rubocop will cause the CI (Travis) to fail, however 'Reek' failures will not.

Versioning

This library aims to adhere to Semantic Versioning 2.0.0. Violations of this scheme should be reported as bugs. Specifically, if a minor or patch version is released that breaks backward compatibility, that version should be immediately yanked and/or a new version should be immediately released that restores compatibility. Breaking changes to the public API will only be introduced with new major versions. As a result of this policy, you can (and should) specify a dependency on this gem using the Pessimistic Version Constraint with two digits of precision. For example:

spec.add_dependency 'confoog', '~> 1.0'

Of course, currently we have not even reached version 1, so leave off the version requirement completely. Expect any and all of the API and interface to change!

License

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.