README

Code is left for historical reasons. If you want something good and modern use Symfony Config.

Waffer

A tiny, fast and (if you want) powerful configuration library. It was wrote in intetion of usage with long running PHP daemons. It supports JSON & serializations configuration files out-of-box.

FAQ

Why Waffer?

When I started working on this code I need some sort of a name. Since it was intended to have smaller version along with bigger one (extending it) I came up with "diet" term stolen right from Panic Inc. and it's DietCoda app ;)
Still eating waffers with maple syrup I laughed and created DietWaffer class. This name sticks.

There's no XML!

Yup, you're right. I fully agree with Linus who's said:

XML is the worst format ever designed

I never had enough patience to deal with DOM trees, even with SimpleXML library onboard.
If you wish XML to be supported I kindly welcome pull-request for that feature.

Wait, where's INI?

INI format have a lot of limitations, and it's full of hacks. To be honest Waffer had INI support while ago, bud it was removed due to naming limitations.
For further informations see Notes section in PHP documentation for parse_ini_string().

Usage

Every library using Waffer is intended to have it it's default configuration. It's much like jQuery plugins - you can provide some extra options which overwrite default configuration. Single instance of Waffer is intended to be injected into multiple objects, deep into application.

Initialization

You can choose one of two classes - Waffer and DietWaffer. Second one contains only core configuration black-box, without any export/import capabilities.
Initial configuration array can be specified as constructor parameter.

(Re)storing data

Waffer was built to be simple, powerful and flexible tool. It supports many different ways of getting and storing configuration data. Let code below exaplains all of them:

$myAwesomeConfiguration = array(
    'version' => 1.1, //This is global configuration option
    'yummyWaffers' => 10,
    'ACME\FooBar' => array( //Configuration for "FooBar" library by ACME
        'version' => M_PI,
        'bakingTemp' => 280,
        'defaultOwner' => 'Mr. Foo'
    )
);

$config = new DietWaffer($myAwesomeConfiguration); //We don't need full Waffer for options below

//Basic usage
echo "Global version: ".$config->storage['version']."\n"; //Fastest but completly non-OO

$config->setVersion(1.2); //Magic setter
echo "New global version: ".$config->getVersion()."\n"; //...with magic getter

$config->yummyWaffers++; //You can also use magic property set
echo "No. of yummy waffers: ".$config->yummyWaffers."\n"; //...and get

//Namespaces
echo "ACME FooBar version: ".$config->storage['ACME\FooBar']['version']."\n";

$config->setVersion(3.1, 'ACME\FooBar'); //Magic setter
echo "New ACME FooBar version: ".$config->getVersion('ACME\FooBar')."\n"; //...with magic getter


//Removing variables
unset($config->yummyWaffers);

//Checking if variable exists
var_dump(
    isset($config->version),
    isset($config->yummyWaffers),
    isset($config->notin)
);

//Let's drive OO teachers crazy ;]
var_dump(
    $config(),
    $config('ACME\FooBar')
);

Importing & exporting

Library supports JSON & (un)serialize oob. It also handles loading & saving settings from/to files.
Let's a piece of code explain everything.

$config = new Waffer($myAwesomeConfiguration);

echo "JSON: ".$config->toJSON()."\n";
echo "Serialized: ".$config->serialize()."\n";
echo "Save to file ".print_r($config->toFile("example.conf"), true)."\n"; //This will save JSON file, you can pass Waffer::FORMAT_SERIAL to use serialization
//You can use fromFile() the same way
echo "PHP array: \n".$config."\n";

Libraries integration

Waffer intrnally stores configuration as large array. By design every library using Waffer should register it's settings under own namespace key as shown below.

namespace ACME\FooBar;

class FooBar {
    public static $defaultConfigutation = array(
        "welecome" => "Hello %s!"
        "funFacts" => array(
            "There's disease named Maple syrup urine disease",
            "Defibrillated patient isn't going to jump out of the bed (unless you're in Hollywood)"
        )
    );
    
    private $config;
    
    public function __construct(DietWaffer $config) {
        $this->config = $config;
        $this->config->storage[__NAMESPACE__] = array_replace_recursive(self::$defaultConfigutation, (array)@$this->config->storage[__NAMESPACE__]); 
    }
}