Are you tired of writing custom code to parse and represent every new configuration file utilized in your programs? The Config Toolkit generates configuration classes and can populate them robustly by parsing different formats of configuration files.
ConfigToolkit is a free Ruby based tool that makes sourcing information from (parsing) configuration files robust and easy!
ConfigToolkit:
· Allows programmers to specify the type of data that should be loadedfrom a configuration file. The toolkit automatically will validatethe file`s data against this specification when loading the file, ensuringthat the specification always is obeyed and saving the programmer thetedious chore of writing validation code.
· Automagically generates parameter accessor methods (getters, setters, andpredicates to test for presence), an equality operator, and a +to_s+ methodfrom the configuration`s specification.
· Allows programmers to create configuration files,easily and programatically.
Provides a class that can load (parse) Ruby configuration files (allowing thefull power of Ruby to be used within configuration files).
· Provides classes that can load from (parse) and dump to YAML and key-valueconfiguration files.
· Provides classes that can load from and dump to Hashes.
· Provides a class that allows the contents of one configuration source tooverride the contents of another (this works with configuration files of anyformat or Hashes).
· Is very extensible, allowing the engine to be used with custom formatconfiguration files and with custom data validation rules.
Here are some key features of "ConfigToolkit":
· The ConfigToolkit allows programmers to define a new configuration class by specifying the parameters that are included in the configuration. A parameter specification consists of the class of the parameter???s values, whether or not the paramater is required, and a default value if the parameter is not required.
· Getter, setter, and predicate methods automatically are generated for a new configuration class for each specified parameter to get the parameter???s value, set the parameter???s value, and test whether the parameter has a value.
· A method to clear a parameter???s value automatically is generated for optional parameters.
· A block can be passed to the new method of a configuration class in order to initialize the instance (see ConfigToolkit::BaseConfig.new).
· The ConfigToolkit (by default) will print warnings when it encounters unknown configuration parameters, allowing errors in configuration files to be discovered quickly.
· The behavior of the ConfigToolkit for a particular ConfigToolkit::BaseConfig child class or for an instance of a ConfigToolkit::BaseConfig child class can be configured through specifying a ConfigToolkit::ConfigToolkitConfig. Right now, the ConfigToolkit???s behavior when it encounters an unknown parameter can be configured (to ignore the unknown parameter, to warn about the unknown parameter, or to raise an error about the unknown parameter).
· rdoc can detect and generate documentation for each parameter in a configuration class (see FAQ.txt for how to enable this).
· An equality operator exists for each configuration class that determines equality based on whether all parameter values are equal.
· A to_s method that produces very pretty output exists for each configuration class (ConfigToolkit::BaseConfig#to_s, leveraging the ConfigToolkit::PrettyPrintWriter)
· Programmers can specify custom validation blocks for each parameter, in order to enforce specifications not directly supported by the engine.
· Programmers can define a method in a configuration class that will be called in order to enforce relationships between the values of different parameters (ConfigToolkit::BaseConfig#validate_all_values)
· Programmers can create custom reader and writer classes in order to load from and dump to (respectively) configuration file formats not directly supported by the ConfigToolkit.
· Configuration classes can be nested to any depth within each other.
· Configuration classes have first class support for Array configuration parameters. Constraints can be specified for a given Array parameter that will ensure that all elements are of a specified class and that there are a specified number of elements present (see ConfigToolkit::ConstrainedArray)
· The ConfigToolkit supports multiple configurations stored in a single file; it is able to distinguish that different configurations within a file belong to different configuration objects. For example, ???production??
