K-INI

Simple Kotlin/Java library to read and write .ini files (requires Java 11 or above)

Usage

Working with .ini files

An .ini file is represented by an instance of the class org.mth.kini.Ini, describing sections and properties contained in the .ini file.

Instances of the org.mth.kini.Ini class can be obtained in two ways:

• instantiate an object through the default constructor val ini = Ini()

• using Ini.newIni function to build a Ini object in the style of Kotlin scope functions

val ini = Ini.newIni {
    section("Section 1") {
        set("property 1", "value 1")
        set("property 2", "value 2")
    }
    section("Section 2") {
        set("property 1", "value 1")
        set("property 2", "value 2")
    }
}

Existing .ini files can be loaded into a Ini object through one of the load functions of the org.mth.kini.Ini class.

val ini = Ini.load(Path.of("test\\sample.ini"))

The content of an Ini object can be store to the local filesystem with a call to the store(ini: Ini, path: Path, charset: Charset) function, or by a direct call of the store function of the Ini object.

val ini = Ini()
ini.store(Path.of("test\\sample.ini"))

Sections

Use the hasSection(name: String) to check that a section is present in the Ini. The function section(name: String) retrieves a named section for property retrieval.

val section: IniSection = ini.section("my-section")

When the Ini object doesn't contain a section with the given name, the function still returns a new IniSection object, so that the same function serves for both creation ad retrieval purposes.

A section (with all its properties) can be removed from the Ini object by calling the removeSection(name: String) function.

Properties

To check for a property use the hasProperty(name: String) function of the org.mth.kini.IniSection class.

IniSection behaves like a map, so properties are stored as key-value pairs, where both the key and value are String objects. To insert a new property or to modify an existing value the IniSection class provides the set(name: String, value: String) function. To access a property value the class provides the function get(name: String) to return the related string value.

The set and get functions are also implemented as Kotlin operator functions, so properties can be referred by index access:

val value = section["my-property"]      // get a property value
section["my-property"] = "new value"    // set a property value

NOTE: K-INI supports default properties, viz properties without a parent section, belonging to the top-level context of the .ini file. To access them use the set and get functions or the index access syntax as for the IniSection.

val ini = Ini()
// some initialization code ...
val value = ini["my-property"]  // obtain a top-level property value

To avoid casts to other types, IniSection offers functions to get property values in the most common types (boolean and numerics):

• getBoolean(name: String)
• getShort(name: String)
• getInt(name: String)
• getLong(name: String)
• getDouble(name: String)
• getFloat(name: String)

NOTE: if the value cannot be parsed into the requested datatype an exception is thrown.

License

Distributed under the MIT License.