Configuration

An INI-style configuration file parser.

Configuration implements an in-memory store for a configuration file whose syntax is reminiscent of classic Windows .INI files, though with many extensions.

Syntax

A configuration file is broken into sections, and each section is introduced by a section name in brackets. For example:

[main]
installation.directory=/usr/local/foo
program.directory: /usr/local/foo/programs

[search]
searchCommand: find /usr/local/foo -type f -name '*.class'

[display]
searchFailedMessage=Search failed, sorry.

Notes and caveats:

At least one section is required.

Sections may be empty.

It is an error to have any variable definitions before the first section header.

The section names "system" and "env" are reserved. They don't really exist, but they're used during variable substitution (see below) to substitute from System.properties and the environment, respectively.

Section Name Syntax

There can be any amount of whitespace before and after the brackets in a section name; the whitespace is ignored. Section names may consist of alphanumeric characters and underscores. Anything else is not permitted.

Variable Syntax

Each section contains zero or more variable settings. Similar to a Java Properties file, the variables are specified as name/value pairs, separated by an equal sign ("=") or a colon (":"). Variable names are case-sensitive by default, though the case-sensitivity (and other aspects of the variable name) may be changed by subclassing Configuration and providing your own version of the transformOptionName() method. Variable names may contain alphanumerics, underscores, and hyphens (-). Variable values may contain anything at all. The parser ignores whitespace on either side of the "=" or ":"; that is, leading whitespace in the value is skipped. The way to include leading whitespace in a value is escape the whitespace characters with backslashes. (See below).

Continuation Lines

Variable definitions may span multiple lines; each line to be continued must end with a backslash ("\") character, which escapes the meaning of the newline, causing it to be treated like a space character. The following line is treated as a logical continuation of the first line. Unlike Java properties files, however, leading whitespace is not removed from continued lines.

Only variable definition lines may be continued. Section header lines, comment lines (see below) and include directives (see below) cannot span multiple lines.

Expansions of Variable Values

The configuration parser preprocesses each variable's value, replacing embedded metacharacter sequences and substituting variable references. You can use backslashes to escape the special characters that the parser uses to recognize metacharacter and variable sequences; you can also use single quotes. See Suppressing Metacharacter Expansion and Variable Substitution, below, for more details.

Metacharacters

The parser recognizes Java-style ASCII escape sequences \t, \n, \r, \\, \ (a backslash and a space), and \uxxxx are recognized and converted to single characters. Note that metacharacter expansion is performed before variable substitution.

Variable Substitution

A variable value can interpolate the values of other variables, using a variable substitution syntax. The general form of a variable reference is ${sectionName.varName}.

sectionName is the name of the section containing the variable to substitute; if omitted, it defaults to the current section. varName is the name of the variable to substitute.

If a variable reference specifies a section name, the referenced section must precede the current section. It is not possible to substitute the value of a variable in a section that occurs later in the file.

The section names "system" and "env" are reserved for special "pseudosections."

The "system" pseudosection is used to interpolate values from System.properties For instance, ${system.user.home} substitutes the value of the user.home system property (typically, the home directory of the user running the program). Similarly, ${system.user.name} substitutes the user's name.

The "env" pseudosection is used to interpolate values from the environment. On UNIX systems, for instance, ${env.HOME} substitutes user's home directory (and is, therefore, a synonym for ${system.user.home}. On some versions of Windows, ${env.USERNAME} will substitute the name of the user running the program. Note: On UNIX systems, environment variable names are typically case-sensitive; for instance, ${env.USER} and ${env.user} refer to different environment variables. On Windows systems, environment variable names are typically case-insensitive; ${env.USERNAME} and ${env.username} are equivalent.

Notes and caveats:

Configuration uses the grizzled.string.template.UnixShellVariableSubstituter class to do variable substitution, so it honors all the syntax conventions supported by that class.

Variable substitutions are only permitted within variable values. They are ignored in variable names, section names, include directives and comments.

Variable substitution is performed after metacharacter expansion (so don't include metacharacter sequences in your variable names).

To include a literal "$" character in a variable value, escape it with a backslash, e.g., "var=value with \$ dollar sign"

Suppressing Metacharacter Expansion and Variable Substitution

To prevent the parser from interpreting metacharacter sequences, variable substitutions and other special characters, use the "->" assignment operator, instead of ":" or "=".

For example, suppose you want to set variable "prompt" to the literal value "Enter value. To specify a newline, use \n." The following configuration file line will do the trick:

prompt -> Enter value. To specify a newline, use \n

Similarly, to set variable "abc" to the literal string "${foo}" suppressing the parser's attempts to expand "${foo}" as a variable reference, you could use:

abc -> ${foo}

Note: It's also possible, though hairy, to escape the special meaning of special characters via the backslash character. For instance, you can escape the variable substitution lead-in character, '$', with a backslash. e.g., "\$". This technique is not recommended, however, because you have to double-escape any backslash characters that you want to be preserved literally. For instance, to get "\t", you must specify "\\\\t". To get a literal backslash, specify "\\\\". (Yes, that's four backslashes, just to get a single unescaped one.) This double-escaping is a regrettable side effect of how the configuration file parses variable values: It makes two separate passes over the value (one for metacharacter expansion and another for variable expansion). Each of those passes honors and processes backslash escapes. This problem would go away if the configuration file parser parsed both metacharacter sequences and variable substitutions itself, in one pass. It doesn't currently do that, because it uses the separate grizzled.string.template.UnixShellStringTemplate class grizzled.GrizzledString.translateMetachars() method to do the variable substitution and metacharacter translation. In general, you're better off just sticking with the "->" assignment operator.

Includes

A special include directive permits inline inclusion of another configuration file. The include directive takes two forms:

%include "path"
%include "URL"

For example:

%include "/home/bmc/mytools/common.cfg"
%include "http://configs.example.com/mytools/common.cfg"

If the include path is not a URL, and is not an absolute path, its location is relative to the file that's trying to include it.

The included file may contain any content that is valid for this parser. It may contain just variable definitions (i.e., the contents of a section, without the section header), or it may contain a complete configuration file, with individual sections. Since Configuration recognizes a variable syntax that is essentially identical to Java's properties file syntax, it's also legal to include a properties file, provided it's included within a valid section.

Note: Attempting to include a file from itself, either directly or indirectly, will cause the parser to throw an exception.

Comments and Blank Lines

A comment line is a one whose first non-whitespace character is a "#". A blank line is a line containing no content, or one containing only white space. Blank lines and comments are ignored.

Caller-supplied Predefined Sections

Calling applications may supply predefined sections and options, in the form of a map. These sections may then be used by other sections, via variable references. The predefined sections are defined in a map of maps. The outer map is keyed by predefined section name. The inner maps consist of options and their values. For instance, to read a configuration file, giving it access to certain command line parameters, you could do something like this:

object Foo
{
    def main(args: Array[String]) =
    {
        // You'd obviously want to do some real argument checking here.
        val configFile = args(0)
        val name = args(1)
        val ipAddress = args(2)
        val sections = Map("args" -> Map("name" -> name,
                                         "ip" -> ipAddress))
        val config = Configuration(configFile, sections)
        ...
    }
}