Support for indexed keys

[vaibhavk81]

I would like to request an option to include duplicate keys or keys with index. The config should return list/array for all the values for this key.

e.g.
server=Sometext
server=Othertext

OR
server.0=Sometext
server.1=Othertext

@key("server")
String[] server;

Thanks,

[lviggiano]

Duplicate keys are not supported by properties files. This means that they would be invalid Java properties files.

Multiline values are supported by properties files out of the box. Example:

you can do something like this:

config.prop=Sometext,\
                  OtherText,\
                  ...

The above will work just fine as:

@Key("config.prop");
public String configProp();     

Another option is to use XML. It will be released in the next version. See XML Support :

<config>
   <prop>
      Sometext
      OtherText
      ...
   </prop>
</config>

Then, for the above xml you can define the newline as separator, or define a SeparatorClass.

@Separator("\n")  //newline
@Key("config.prop");
public String configProp();     

Indexed properties are an option to map legacy configuration files, that are using this notation. Which is quite wrong from my point of view, since properties files do support multiline values out of the box, plus owner adds support for
collections, so the best way to implement this is the first example in this comment, unless there is some good reason I am missing.
Adding indexed properties adds some overhead on properties lookup since we need then to check for multivalues every time a property is requested, then since they are indexed we also need to sort them and return in the proper order, plus... what would be the correct behavior if one index is missing? example:

server.0=...
server.1=...   
server.3=...              # server.2 is missing!
server.4=...

So, I will consider this feature for future development if I get some good understanding what problem the indexed properties are solving that isn't already solved by multiline properties values (supported by default in Java properties files) and owner collections support.

[Ronmck]

Do you support this type of XML structure, I want get elements by value.

env.name this the key for each of my servers.

<servers>
    <env>
        <name>DEV</name>
        <hostname>locahost1</hostname>
        <port>60000</port>
        <user>myuser1</user>
        <password>mypass1</password>
    </env>
    <env>
        <name>SIT</name>
        <hostname>locahost2</hostname>
        <port>60010</port>
        <user>myuser2</user>
        <password>mypass2</password>
    </env>
    <env>
        <name>UAT</name>
        <hostname>locahost3</hostname>
        <port>60020</port>
        <user>myuser3</user>
        <password>mypass3</password>
    </env>
    <env>
        <name>SVP</name>
        <hostname>locahost4</hostname>
        <port>60030</port>
        <user>myuser4</user>
        <password>mypass4</password>
    </env>
</servers>

[lviggiano]

@Ronmck: No, your xml can't be supported at the moment. You can change it a follows:

<servers>
    <dev>
        <name>DEV</name>
        <hostname>locahost1</hostname>
        <port>60000</port>
        <user>myuser1</user>
        <password>mypass1</password>
    </dev>
    <sit>
        <name>SIT</name>
        <hostname>locahost2</hostname>
        <port>60010</port>
        <user>myuser2</user>
        <password>mypass2</password>
    </sit>
    <uat>
        <name>UAT</name>
        <hostname>locahost3</hostname>
        <port>60020</port>
        <user>myuser3</user>
        <password>mypass3</password>
    </uat>
    <svp>
        <name>SVP</name>
        <hostname>locahost4</hostname>
        <port>60030</port>
        <user>myuser4</user>
        <password>mypass4</password>
    </svp>
</servers>

This one should work fine.

I want to modify OWNER to support something like this:

interface MyConfig extends Config {
    @Key("servers.${env}.name");
    String name();

    @Key("servers.${env}.hostname");
    String hostname();

    @Key("servers.${env}.port");
    Integer port();
}

ConfigFactory.setProperty("env", "dev"); 
MyConfig cfg = ConfigFactory.create(MyConfig.class);

This way you can select ${env} in the ConfigFactory (or from the system properties) and have the above interface map to the appropriate section.

This is not working at the moment, but it is easy to implement and it will be available in the next release.