application config that makes me happy
So, I’ve done a bit more hacking on addex, some of which was to make it usable by a larger group of people. More on that in another entry, though.
The other thing I did was finally get around to changing the config file format just a little. It took a tiny bit of work, but I’m really, really happy with it.
I wanted to use an INI file format, because the “sections and name/value pairs” was really well-suited to what I wanted. The problem was that I wanted some multi-value entries. One option was to parse the values by hand. At first, that’s what I did. I read in with Config::Tiny, then split the relevant values. The problem was that this was only really possible with the root set of options, not with the rest.
I looked into extending Config::Tiny, but it wasn’t going to happen, so then I looked into the eight hundred and sixty four other config parsers (most of which seem to be for INI files) on the CPAN. Some of them did what I want, but were way, way too feature-laden, including some things that I’d count as misfeatures. I nearly used Config::IniHash, but then I realized that its multivalue support required that either (a) every property can be a multivalue, and therefore all properties are arrays refs or (b) you declare all the legal multivalue for all possible sections when you request that the file be parsed. (a) seemed really obnoxious and (b) seemed impossible, since I wouldn’t know all the multivalues until I knew what plugins would be loaded.
See, here’s my addex.ini:
addressbook = App::Addex::AddressBook::Apple
output = App::Addex::Output::Mutt
output = App::Addex::Output::Procmail
output = App::Addex::Output::SpamAssassin
[App::Addex::Output::Mutt]
filename = mutt/alias-abook
[App::Addex::Output::Procmail]
filename = procmail/friends.rc
[App::Addex::Output::SpamAssassin]
filename = spamassassin/whitelists-abook
The default section is classes, which sets up some core behaviors. Following
that, each plugin’s configuration goes in its own section. Until I knew what
plugins would be loaded, I couldn’t set up multivalues.
My solution was to make the config reader event-driven (in the lamest sense of
the phrase). When a change_section event occurs, it loads the plugin,
queries it for multivalue properties, and then keeps going. If they occur at
all, multivalue properties are always arrayrefs. If a non-multivalue property
appears more than once in a section, an exception is raised.
As an aside: in App::Addex, once the config is read in, each plugin is instantiated into an object like this:
$plugin = $plugin_class->new($config->{plugin_class});
Each plugin can, thus, be fully configured via this very simple config format. I think I’ll use it again and again.
What really made me happy, though, is that this isn’t just yet another specialized config reader. App::Addex::Config is a subclass of Config::INI::Reader, which acts a lot like Config::Tiny, but has a fair number more methods which can be overridden in subclasses, so that making an INI file reader with some special behaviors is very easy. I may or may not write Config::INI::Writer to even the balance. I feel compelled to, but I don’t think I have any need.