Properties-Reader
An ini file compatible properties reader for Node.JS
Installation
The easiest installation is through NPM:
npm install properties-reader
API
Read properties from a file:
var propertiesReader = require('properties-reader');
var properties = propertiesReader('/path/to/properties.file');
The properties are then accessible either by fully qualified name, or if the property names are in dot-delimited
notation, they can be access as an object:
// fully qualified name
var property = properties.get('some.property.name');
// by object path
var property = properties.path().some.property.name;
To read more than one file, chain calls to the .append()
method:
properties.append('/another.file').append('/yet/another.file');
To read properties from a string, use the .read()
method:
properties.read('some.property = Value \n another.property = Another Value');
To set a single property into the properties object, use .set()
:
properties.set('property.name', 'Property Value');
When reading a .ini
file, sections are created by having a line that contains just a section name in square
brackets. The section name is then prefixed to all property names that follow it until another section name is found
to replace the current section.
# contents of properties file
[main]
some.thing = foo
[blah]
some.thing = bar
// reading these back from the properties reader
properties.get('main.some.thing') == 'foo';
properties.get('blah.some.thing') == 'bar';
// looping through the properties reader
properties.each((key, value) => {
// called for each item in the reader,
// first with key=main.some.thing, value=foo
// next with key=blah.some.thing, value=bar
});
// get all properties at once
expect(properties.getAllProperties()).toEqual({
'main.some.thing': 'foo',
'blah.some.thing': 'bar',
})
Checking for the current number of properties that have been read into the reader:
var propertiesCount = properties.length;
The length is calculated on request, so if accessing this in a loop an efficiency would be achieved by caching the
value.
When duplicate names are found in the properties, the first one read will be replaced with the later one.
To get the complete set of properties, either loop through them with the .each((key, value) => {})
iterator or
use the convenience method getAllProperties
to return the complete set of flattened properties.
Saving changes
Once a file has been read and changes made, saving those changes to another file is as simple as running:
const propertiesReader = require('properties-reader');
const props = propertiesReader(filePath, {writer: { saveSections: true }});
await props.save(filePath);
props.save(filePath, function then(err, data) { ... });
props.save(filePath).then(onSaved, onSaveError);
To output the properties without any section headings, set the saveSections
option to false
Data Types
Properties will automatically be converted to their regular data types when they represent true/false or numeric
values. To get the original value without any parsing / type coercion applied, use properties.getRaw('path.to.prop')
.
FAQ / Breaking Changes
Duplicate Section Headings
From version 2.0.0
the default behaviour relating to multiple [section]
blocks with the same name has changed
so combine the items of each same-named section into the one section. This is only visible when saving the items
(via reader.save()
).
To restore the previous behaviour which would allow duplicate [...]
blocks to be created, supply an appender
configuration with the property allowDuplicateSections
set to true
.
const propertiesReader = require('properties-reader');
const props = propertiesReader(filePath, 'utf-8', { allowDuplicateSections: true });
Contributions
If you find bugs or want to change functionality, feel free to fork and pull request.