configly

configly

A developer-friendly lightweight replacement for the config module that works with custom config directory and pluggable parsers.

Notice of change of ownership: Starting version 3.0.0 this package has changed it's owner and goals. The old version (2.0.3) is still available on npm via npm install configly@2.0.3 and on github.com/ksmithut/configly. Thank you.

Install

$ npm install --save configly

Why

Original config module is convenient and easy to start with library, but in the same time being focused that much on "easy" it lacks certain features to be a "developer friendly" library.

This package is addressing those issues, while keeping easy of use and featureset on par with the original module.

Usage

Basic

To simply replace your current config setup, add following to your files:

var config = require('configly')();

console.log(config.my.combined.options);

It will load .js and .json files from ./config folder, relative to the current working directory (process.cwd()).

It will cache the result, so files will be read only once per process.

Pluggable formats and parsers

Out of the box configly supports only two formats (.js and .json), but developers can add their own parsers and support for more formats (e.g. .ini, .yaml, .cson).

var config     = require('configly');
// more parsers
var ini        = require('ini');
var cson       = require('cson');
var yaml       = require('js-yaml');
var properties = require('properties');
var json5      = require('json5');

// assemble new parsers list
// order doesn't matter since they
// will be alphabetically sorted
config.PARSERS = {
  ini       : ini.parse,
  // have it as a wrapper to prevent extra arguments leaking
  cson      : function(str) { return cson.parse(str); },
  yml       : function(str) { return yaml.safeLoad(str); },
  // same options as used within `config` module
  properties: function(str) { return properties.parse(str, {namespaces: true, variables: true, sections: true}); },
  // use json5 instead of `JSON.parse`
  json      : json5.parse
  // keep the original one
  js        : config.PARSERS.js,
};

var configObj = config();

Since configly is a singleton, this setup could be done in your index file, and the rest of the files would use it the same way as in the "Basic" example.

Custom config directory

To load config files from a custom directory, just specify it as the first argument.

var config = require('configly')('./etc'); // `require('configly')('./etc');` would work the same way`

It will load files from the etc folder relative to the current working directory, by providing absolute path, you can make sure exact location of the config files, which is useful to libraries meant to be used within larger applications and for command line apps that could be invoked from different directories.

var path   = require('path');
var config = require('configly')(path.join(__dirname, 'etc'));

Or you can set up new directory as default one and invoke configly without custom arguments from within other files.

// index.js
var path     = require('path');
var configly = require('configly');

configly.DEFAULTS.directory = path.join(__dirname, 'etc');

// app.js
var config = require('configly')();

Additional config directories

It is possible to load files from more than one config directory within one application/module.

var path     = require('path');
var ini      = require('ini');
var configly = require('configly');

var appConfig   = configly(path.join(__dirname, 'app-config'));
// for example you have .ini config files there
var rulesConfig = configly(path.join(__dirname, 'rules-config'), {ini: ini.parse});

If there is a need to merge config objects into one, you can use deeply module or any other package that provides deep merging.

var merge     = require('deeply');
var allConfig = merge(appConfig, rulesConfig);

More examples

For more examples check out test directory.

Differences

Main differences between configly and config:

• Configly doesn't read/write NODE_CONFIG environment variable.

• Configly doesn't pollute your logs with warnings of non-existent files, it will either throw (if couldn't read/parse a file) or be silent.

• Configly doesn't provide get, has methods, it returns pure js object.

• Configly doesn't auto-strip comments from JSON files, use configly.PARSERS['json'] = json5.parse;.

• Configly provides deterministic (and controllable) order of the config files it loads from.

• Configly provides deterministic (and controllable) order of the file extensions it loads from.

• Configly provides post-load hooks for config files, (e.g. custom-environment-variables works via this mechanism).

• Configly provides ability to combine environment variables within one entry (e.g. "endpoint": "${REMOTE_HOST}:${REMOTE_PORT}").

• Configly provides access to the underlying functions and defaults, allowing to utilize parts of the functionality for greater flexibility.

License

Configly is licensed under the MIT license.