Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Abstractions 2025.1.0

Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration

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The implementations for Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration, include several configuration sources and several parsers (Json / Xml / Ini / Toml / Yaml).

• Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration
• Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Consul
• Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Etcd
• Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Redis

1. Why

The Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration provide develops out of box and powerful configuration functions. It supports several formats (Json / Xml / Ini) to covers most usage scenarios. But still has some points I think it can be improved.

1.1. The parser is the core function but hasn't been defined to public, this design affects modularity and reuse

Every configuration is base on its stream version with the same format, like JsonConfigurationProvider / JsonStreamConfigurationProvider and XmlConfigurationProvider / XmlStreamConfigurationProvider etc. In the stream provider it use serializer to parse the structure stream into a Dictionary<string, string?>. But in these offical configuration providers the parser classes or functions were defined to internal or pravite.

1.2. Other serializers

Like Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json was base on System.Text.Json, it is a great package but someone prefer Newtonsoft.Json or other serializers with some reasons, and the Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.NewtonsoftJson has been set to deprecate from 2020. And then in addition to Json / Xml / Ini, we may now need other configration formats like Toml / Yaml etc.

1.3. More configuration sources

With the microservices and cloud, the Centralized Configuration will be more and more important. Microsoft has provided some Centralized Configuration sources for us, but they are usually based on azure. All the more reason to be cloud neutrality when cloud is so powerful, some projects and services prefer privately deployed key-value stores.

2. What this project does

2.1. Flantteners

For parser, Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration abstracts the concept called Flanttener to parse and flatten the stream into Dictionary<string, string?>. Then now we have the following implementations:

2.1.1. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Ini

Base on Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Ini and with the same behavior.

2.1.2. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.IniParser

ini-parser is A .NET, Mono and Unity3d compatible(*) library for reading/writing INI data from IO streams, file streams, and strings written in C#.

Also implements merging operations, both for complete ini files, sections, or even just a subset of the keys contained by the files.

(*) This library is 100% .NET code and does not have any dependencies on Windows API calls in order to be portable.

2.1.3. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Json

Base on Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Json and with the same behavior.

2.1.4. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.NewtonsoftJson

Newtonsoft.Json is a popular high-performance JSON framework for .NET. With this implement we can pass JsonSerializerSettings for cumstomize deserialize.

2.1.5. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.SharpYaml

SharpYaml is a .NET library that provides a YAML parser and serialization engine for .NET objects, compatible with CoreCLR.

2.1.6. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Tomlet

Tomlet is a Zero-Dependency, model-based TOML De/Serializer for .NET.

2.1.7. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Tomlyn

Tomlyn is a TOML parser, validator and authoring library for .NET Framework and .NET Core.

2.1.8. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.Xml

Base on Microsoft.Extensions.Configuration.Xml and with the same behavior.

2.1.9. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Flattener.YamlDotNet

YamlDotNet is a .NET library for YAML. YamlDotNet provides low level parsing and emitting of YAML as well as a high level object model similar to XmlDocument. A serialization library is also included that allows to read and write objects from and to YAML streams.

2.2. More Configuration sources

In addition to configuration files, modern services increasingly rely on centralized configuration. For this purpose there are these configuration sources:

2.2.1. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration

Because the abstractions of Flantten, Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration support difference configuration files, like Json, Xml, Ini, Toml and Yaml.

2.2.2. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Consul

Consul is a service networking solution that provides a full-featured control plane with service discovery, configuration, and segmentation functionality. It is designed to make it easy to manage and secure service-to-service communication across distributed infrastructure.

2.2.3. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Etcd

Etcd is a distributed key-value store that provides a reliable way to store data across a cluster of machines. It is used to store configuration data, metadata, and other critical information that needs to be accessed by distributed systems.

2.2.4. Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Redis

Redis (Remote Dictionary Server) is an open-source, in-memory data structure store that can be used as a database, cache, and message broker. It supports various data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, and geospatial indexes.

3. How to use

Taking Toml file configuration as an example, we now have a Toml file which named 'Test.toml' like below:

stringKey = "stringValue"
numberKey = 123
booleanKey = true
nullKey = ""  # TOML does not have a native null type, so we use an empty string

[nestedObject]
nestedStringKey = "nestedStringValue"
nestedNumberKey = 456
nestedBooleanKey = false
nestedNullKey = ""  # Again, using an empty string for null

arrayKey = ["arrayStringValue", 789, false, ""]

[[arrayKeyWithNestedObjects]]
arrayNestedObjectKey = "arrayNestedObjectValue"

# Date and time example
dateKey = 1979-05-27T07:32:00Z

And then can get this package via nuget.

PM> Install-Package Aoxe.Extensions.Configuration.Tomlyn

Now we can use it like this:

var configurationBuilder = new ConfigurationBuilder();
configurationBuilder.AddTomlFile("./Test.toml");
IConfiguration configuration = configurationBuilder.Build();
var value = configuration["nestedObject:nestedStringKey"]; // The value is "nestedStringValue"

Thank`s for JetBrains for the great support in providing assistance and user-friendly environment for my open source projects.