ConfigDSL

A tasty Ruby-based DSL for configuration files. Get rid of those silly YAML and JSON configs.

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'configdsl'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install configdsl

Usage

Standalone Usage

To read a config file

in your app:

# Read external data
ConfigDSL.read("test.cdsl.rb")

test.cdsl.rb

hi "User"
# p hi  # => "User"

list do
  one "123"
  two "345"
  three do
    one "1"
    three_two one + " 2"
    three_three "three"
  end
  see "will_be_overwritten"
end

list 5 do |index|
  append "anything"
  second index + 1
  square index ** 2

  see "overwritten!"
end

starting_time Time.now

will produce

pp ConfigDSL.data

{:hi=>"User",
 :list=>
  {:one=>"123",
   :two=>"345",
   :three=>{:one=>"1", :three_two=>"1 2", :three_three=>"three"},
   :see=>"overwritten!",
   :append=>"anything",
   :second=>6,
   :square=>25},
 :starting_time=>2012-11-05 22:47:36 +0000}

You can also load inline configs form your code

# Execute inline data
ConfigDSL.execute do
  inline_loading_example "here goes"
  value "awesome"
  code "great"
  block_test "config option" do |preset|
    block_val preset
  end
end

# Another inline data
ConfigDSL.execute do
  value "awesome"
end

gives

{:inline_loading_example=>"here goes",
 :value=>"awesome",
 :code=>"great",
 :block_test=>{:block_val=>"config option"}}

You can combine theese two

# Read external data
ConfigDSL.read("test.cdsl.rb")

# Execute inline data
ConfigDSL.execute do
  inline_loading_example "here goes"
  value "awesome"
  code "great"
  block_test "config option" do |preset|
    block_val preset
  end
end

# Another inline data
ConfigDSL.execute do
  value "awesome"
end

require "pp" # for pretty print    
pp ConfigDSL.data

{:hi=>"User",
 :list=>
  {:one=>"123",
   :two=>"345",
   :three=>{:one=>"1", :three_two=>"1 2", :three_three=>"three"},
   :see=>"overwritten!",
   :append=>"anything",
   :second=>6,
   :square=>25},
 :starting_time=>2012-11-05 22:48:40 +0000,
 :inline_loading_example=>"here goes",
 :value=>"awesome",
 :code=>"great",
 :block_test=>{:block_val=>"config option"}}

You can coviniently access all the config values in your app

# Here is how you get all the config
p ConfigDSL.data

# To read data from your app you can do this:

puts ; puts "Value of :value is: "
p ConfigDSL.data[:value]

# or this

puts ; puts "Another way to get it is: "
p ConfigDSL[:value]

# Access block values

puts "Block values: "

puts ; puts "-- [:list][:one]"
p ConfigDSL[:list][:one]

puts ; puts "-- [:list][:two]"
p ConfigDSL[:list][:two]

puts ; puts "-- [:list][:three]"
p ConfigDSL[:list][:three]

puts ; puts "-- [:list][:three][:three_two]"
p ConfigDSL[:list][:three][:three_two]

# Get something complex
puts ; puts "Program was stared at: "
p ConfigDSL[:starting_time]

Keys as methods

You can access all config values using method chaining syntax instead of using the square brackets.

ConfigDSL[:list][:three][:three_two]

is equal to

ConfigDSL.list.three.three_two

However, there is a little problem with this approach. Data container objects do have their own methods besides the methods that they provide to get data values.

Notice that ConfigDSL.data is also a reserved method (it returns internal first-level data container).

Check out the example!

There is an examples dir. Check it out to see how it works for yourself!

Lazy Values

You can have lazy values in your configuration code! By default, those values are evaluated when you call them for the first time. This can be very useful when you want to load config before everything else. Storing some config data in the database? This is for you.

ConfigDSL.execute do
  lazy_varaible lazy!{ Time.now }
  standart_variable Time.now
end

sleep 2

ConfigDSL.standart_variable  # => 2012-11-11 21:37:09 +0400
ConfigDSL.lazy_varaible      # => 2012-11-11 21:37:11 +0400

Can be tricky! Make sure you understand what Lazy Values do and what they don't do!

Use Hashie::Mash - Deprecated!

Hashie::Mash can not be used as a layer-level storage anymore (because of lazy values implementation).

Ruby on Rails

To be implemented. For now you can use it like standalone as initializer.

To-Do List

Ruby on Rails integration

Contributing

Fork it
Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Added some feature')
Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
Create new Pull Request