#12 Ability to read additional attributs on sections and setting

[Anonymous]

I love Nini and have used it on several projects I have
worked on. The current application I am writing requires
me to define public configuration entries and private
entries. Basically I am creating a configuration
application that will read another apps config file, parse
it and then present a UI for modifying values. Each
setting will have a parameter to specify the type of
setting it is, i.e. Text, Numeric, Boolean. The app would
then choose the appropriate editor for the value type.

I need to be able to read (and write) custom attributes
on sections and settings. Below is a sample of what my
configu file will look like.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<Nini>
<Section Name="settings" Alias="Application
Settings">
<Key Name="SearchName"
Value="Search:" Type="Text"/>
<Key Name="Volume" Value="10" Type="Slider"/>
</Section>
</Nini>

I think this would be a great addition. Thank you.

[Brent R. Matzelle]

Logged In: YES
user_id=163900

Hello. Thanks for the kind words about Nini. I appreciate
it very much.

You bring up some interesting points about the architecture
of Nini. I specifically kept non-key/value pair information
out of the product because that is all that is supported in
the base configuration file types (INI, Registry, .NET
.configs). I have thought of adding some type of meta-data
to the documents but I am still unsure of how this would fit
into the API.

My suggestion for your purposes would be to add this:

<Section Name="settings">
<Key Name="settings:Alias" Value="Application
Settings">
</Section>

In the above example you can get the Alias property by
looking for a special property like this:

IConfig config = source.Configs["settings"];
string alias = config.Get(config.Name + ":Alias");

This would allow you to automatically grab section
properties with a method like so:

string GetAlias (IConfig config)
{
return config.Get(config.Name + ":Alias");
}

string alias = GetAlias (config);

As for the Volume example you could do something of the same
nature:
<Key Name="Volume" Value="10"/>
<Key Name="Volume:Type" Value="Slider"/>

Is this useful?

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Logged In: NO

I don't think that will work. Let me explain why. The
application I am writing does not know what configuration
settings an applicaction will have. I guess I could do some
string comparisons and look for "Root" settings by finding
Keys without : in them but I don't like forceing a square peg
into a round hole.

I guess, since I only use the XmlConfigSource and not the INI
nor Registry I could just extend or modify your
XmlConfigSource.

Nini is LGPL right? Would you mind if I borrowed your code
and used it as a base for my own XML config library?