Comments on: Simple File Based Application Configuration

By: Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 02:12:14 +0000

Because I can, and often do, change my config files on the fly and want them to take effect immediately. Feeding the image on startup isn’t really an option. If I add an IP to an authorized IP list for example, that needs to happen without restarting the image.

By: Norbert Hartl

Norbert Hartl — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 09:23:07 +0000

Nice and simple. I somehow like the MetaConfig config/config file :) But why don’t you use a startup script for the squeak image? It is simple, too.

I want to configure seaside as well. So using a startup script and

configuration := (
(WADispatcher default)
entryPointAt: ‘mywebapp’
) configuration.

configuration valueAt: #database put: ‘dbname’.

The rest of my application config goes into a configuration object which is also populated from the startup script

By: Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 01:06:57 +0000

Yea, qa is short for quality assurance, means same thing as test. Not sure what you mean about XHTML validation. Dev is local machine, Qa is test environment on production machines, and of course Prod is just Production.

By: Sebastian

Sebastian — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 16:01:05 +0000

Hi Ramon,
I do something similar. I keep appart dev, test and prod in its own directories (that way they has its own odb also).

I’m curious, your qa profile is same use as the testing stage? also XHTML validation? other?

cheers !

By: Ramon Leon

Ramon Leon — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 14:42:38 +0000

I think you missed the point about simplicity, or at least how serious I am about keeping things stupidly simple. If I have to start writing a parser, it isn’t simple anymore. I usually find I have maybe 10 or 12 config settings for a typical application. If I’m worried about creating 12 files, something else is seriously wrong with me.

By: miguel

miguel — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 09:56:51 +0000

Good article,

Nevertheless, why writing a dedicated file for each setting? Why not writing one simple file with all of the application settings?
In Unix filesystems (not with reiserfs), the number of available inodes are limited and each new file consume an inode.

Yes, of course, it will be more expensive to parse a such file to get just one setting, but we can improve that by writing a parser that does its work in a background at regular time and that populates a dictionary from the parsed settings.