ConfigLib/README.md

ConfigLib

This library facilitates creating, saving and loading YAML configuration files. It does so by using Reflection on configuration classes and automatically saving and loading their fields, creating the configuration file and its parent directories if necessary.

Features

• automatic creation, saving and loading of YAML configurations
• automatic creation of parent directories
• option to add explanatory comments by adding annotations to the class and its fields
• option to exclude fields by making them final, static or transient

How-to

Creating a configuration

To create a new configuration, create a class which extends Configuration. Fields which are added to this class and which are not final, static or transient can automatically be saved to the corresponding configuration file.

Saving and loading a configuration

Instances of your configuration class have a load, save and loadAndSave method:

• load reads the configuration file and updates the field values of your instance.
• save dumps all field names and values to a configuration file. If the file exists, it is overridden; otherwise, it is created.
• loadAndSave first calls load and then save, which is useful when you have added or removed fields from the class or you simply don't know if the configuration file exists.

Adding and removing fields

In order to add or to remove fields, you just need to add them to or remove them from your configuration class. The changes are saved to the configuration file the next time save or loadAndSave is called.

Comments

By using the @Comment annotation, you can add comments to your configuration file. The annotation can be applied to classes or fields. Each String is written into a new line.

Example class

import de.exlll.configlib.Comment;
import de.exlll.configlib.Configuration;
/* other imports */

@Comment({
        "This is a multiline comment.",
        "It describes what the configuration is about."
})
public final class DatabaseConfig extends Configuration {
    /* ignored fields */
    private final String ignored1 = "";     // ignored because final
    private static String ignored2 = "";    // ignored because static
    private transient String ignored3 = ""; // ignored because transient
    /* included fields */
    private String host = "localhost";
    private int port = 3306;
    @Comment("This is a single-line comment.")
    private List<String> strings = Arrays.asList("root", "local");
    @Comment({
            "This is a multiline comment.",
            "It describes what this field does."
    })
    private Map<String, List<String>> listByStrings = new HashMap<>();

    public DatabaseConfig(Path configPath) {
        super(configPath);
    }
    /* optional GETTER and SETTER methods */
}

Example usage

public class Plugin {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Path path = Paths.get("/dir1/dir2/config.yml");
    
        DatabaseConfig config = new DatabaseConfig(path);
        try {
            config.loadAndSave();
        } catch (IOException e) {
            /* do something with exception */
        }
        
        int port = config.getPort();
    }
}