KAConf alternatives and similar libraries

KAConf

2016-2020 Mario Macías

KickAss Configuration v0.9.0 is an Annotation-based configuration system inspired in the wonderful Spring Boot.

Its strong points are:

• Easy to use, integrate and extend
• Tiny footprint: a single, ~13KB JAR with no third-party dependencies
• Born from own's necessity, with no over-engineered use cases

Maven Coordinates

<dependency>
    <groupId>info.macias</groupId>
    <artifactId>kaconf</artifactId>
    <version>0.9.0</version>
</dependency>

[Change log](CHANGELOG.md)

• About KAConf
• Quick demonstration of usage
• Building and using a Configurator object
• Default Configurator behaviour
• Mixing naming conventions into a property
• Inherited fields
• Adding custom Property Sources
• Static final fields
• Kotlin basic types support
• Next steps

Quick demonstration of usage

• The @Property annotation allows you to define any field that recevies its value from a configuration source, whatever its visibility is.

public class DbManager {
    @Property("db.username")
    private String user;

    @Property("db.password")
    private String password;

    // ...
}

• You can even define final and static fields, with default values. Properties that are both final static require to use the KA.def or KA.a[Type] helper methods.

import static info.macias.kaconf.KA.*;

public class Constants {
    @Property("timeout")
    public static final long TIMEOUT_MS = def(1000); // default=1000

    @Property("security.enabled")
    public static final boolean SECURITY_ENABLED = aBoolean();
}

• The Configurator.configure method will automatically set the values from its configuration sources. You can build a Configurator object with multiple sources and different priorities.

public class SomeController {
    private DbManager dbm;

    public void start() {
        Configurator conf = new ConfiguratorBuilder()
            .addSource(System.getenv()) // most priority
            .addSource(System.getProperties())
            .addSource(JavaUtilPropertySource.from("app.properties"))
            .addSource(JavaUtilPropertySource.from( // least priority
                getClass().getResourceAsStream("defaults.properties")
            )).build();

        conf.configure(Constants.class);
        conf.configure(dbm);
    }
}

• It's easy to hardcode configuration for testing purposes.

public class TestSuite {

    DbManager dbm = new DbManager();

    public void setUp() {

        Map<String,String> customProperties = new HashMap<>();
        customProperties.put("db.username","admin");
        customProperties.put("db.password","1234");
        customProperties.put("security.enabled", "false");

        Configurator conf = new ConfiguratorBuilder()
            .addSource(customProperties)
            .addSource(new JavaUtilPropertySource(
                getClass().getResourceAsStream("defaults.properties")
            )).build():

        conf.configure(Constants.class);                    
        conf.configure(dbm);
    }
}     

Building and using a Configurator object

The ConfiguratorBuilder class allows building a Configurator object. The ConfiguratorBuilder.addSource method sets the different sources of properties (PropertySource interface). The PropertySource with most priority is the first instance passed as argument to the addSource method, and the PropertySource with least preference is the object passed to the last addSource invocation.

Example of usage:

Configurator conf = new ConfiguratorBuilder()
    .addSource(System.getenv()) // most priority
    .addSource(System.getProperties())
    .addSource(JavaUtilPropertySource.from("app.properties"))
    .addSource(JavaUtilPropertySource.from( // least priority
        getClass().getResourceAsStream("defaults.properties")
    )).build():

The addSource method accepts the next types as argument:

• java.util.Map<String,?>
• java.util.Properties
• Any implementing class of the PropertySource interface. KAConf bundles two helper implementations:
  • JavaUtilPropertySource
  • MapPropertySource

Once a Configurator object is built, you can pass the configurable object (if object/class properties must be set) or class (if only static fields are willing to be set).

conf.configure(object);
conf.configure(Constants.class);

Default Configurator behaviour

Given the next example properties:

    some.value=1234
    some.other.value=yes

• Numbers: any property that parses into a number is valid. If not, the Configurator.configure will throw a ConfiguratorException:

@Property("some.value")
private int someValue;       // correct

@Property("some.other.value")
private int someOtherValue;  // throws ConfiguratorException

If the property to look is not on the properties sources, the value will remain as 0, or as the default one.

@Property("value.not.found")
private int value1;           // will be 0

@Property("value.not.found")
private int value2 = def(1000); // will be 1000 (default)

//default valid for non-final & static primitive fields
@Property("value.not.found")
private int value3 = 1000;    // will be 1000 (default)

• Strings: any property is valid. If the property is not found, the value will be null or the default one.

@Property("some.value")
private String someValue;        // value -> "1234"

@Property("some.other.value")
private String someOtherValue;   // value -> "yes"

@Property("value.not.found")
private String value1;           // value -> null

@Property("value.not.found")
private String value2 = def(""); // value -> empty, non-null String

//default valid for non-final & static primitive fields
@Property("value.not.found")
private String value3 = "";      // value -> empty, non-null String

• Booleans: any property whose string value exists and is true, 1 or yes will be set as true. Otherwise will be false.

@Property("some.value")
private boolean someValue;       // value -> false

@Property("some.other.value")
private boolean someOtherValue;  // value -> true

@Property("value.not.found")
private boolean value1;          // value -> null

• Chars: the value of the property will be the first character of a string. Any non-found property will set the value to '\0' or the default one.

• Boxed primitive types: boxed primitive types will behave as their unboxed equivalents, but properties that are not found will get the null default value.

@Property("some.value")
private Integer intValue;     // value --> 1234

@Property("not.found.value")
private Integer nullableInt;  // value --> null

Mixing naming conventions into a property

When you use multiple configuration sources (e.g. environment variables and Java properties), different naming conventions may apply for the same property.

You can set multiple names for each property, and KAConf will indistinctly use both (in the same priority as the order in the property array).

public class Animal {
    @Property({"ANIMAL_NAME", "animal.name"})
    private final String name;
}

Inherited fields

KAConf allows setting properties that are annotated in the superclass of the configurable object or class. For example:

public class Animal {
    @Property("animal.name")
    private final String name;
}
public class Dog extends Animal {
    @Property("animal.species")
    private final String species;
}

public class PetShop {
    Configurator conf = ...
    public Animal buy() {
        Dog puppy = new Dog();
        conf.configure(puppy);
        return puppy;
    }
}

Adding custom Property Sources

Adding new Property Sources is simple. Usually is enough to extending the AbstractPropertySource class and implementing only two abstract methods:

protected String get(String name);

Which returns the string value of the property named according to the name argument.

boolean isAvailable();

Which returns true if the properties have been successfully read from the source (e.g. a file or DB).

PropertySources failing to load

Any implementation of PropertySource is expected to fail silently (e.g. if it tries to read the values from a file that is not accessible), and then return false in the isAvailable method.

Static final fields

Because of the way the Java compiler inlines the static final fields of primitive types, it is necessary to assign the result of any method call to the declaration of the field. The KA class provides some simple functions to allow that. For example:

@Property("some.property")
public static final int SOME_PROPERTY = KA.def(1234) // default value

@Property("other.property")
protected static final byte OTHER_PROPERTY = KA.aByte(); //defaults to 0

Kotlin basic types support

As my favourite programming language, Kotlin is a first-class citizen in KAConf, and it is fully supported out of the box.

class KonfigurableClass {
    @Property("publicint")
    var publicint = KA.def(321)

    @Property("finalchar")
    val finalchar = KA.def('a')

    companion object {
        @Property("finalstaticint")
        val finalstaticint: Int = 0
    }
}

object KonfigurableObject {
    @Property("aboolean")
    val aboolean = KA.aBoolean()

    @Property("anint")
    var anint: Int? = null
}

Other JVM languages (Scala, Groovy, Ceylon...) have not been tested. ¿Maybe you can test them for me and tell us the results? :wink:

Next steps

There are still some potential improvements of interest in KAConf.

To implement in v0.9.x

• Some refactoring of the Configurator.configure code to be less spaghetti and more efficient
• Arrays of basic types and strings
• Analyse Property usages in compile time to warn the user about potential issues (e.g. annotating a final static primitive value without using any helper method from the KA class);
• Specify mandatory properties (Configurator will throw and exception if the property is not found)
• Add a description annotation
• Add a String KAConf.info(...) method that shows string information about the parameters (name, description, etc...)