uconfig

uConfig

Lightweight, zero-dependency, and extendable configuration management.

uConfig is extremely light and extendable configuration management library with zero dependencies. Every aspect of configuration is provided through a plugin, which means you can have any combination of flags, environment variables, defaults, secret providers, Kubernetes Downward API, and what you want, and only what you want, through plugins.

uConfig takes the config schema as a struct decorated with tags, nesting is supported.

Supports all basic types, time.Duration, and any other type through encoding.TextUnmarshaler interface. See the flat view package for details.

Example Configuration:

package database
// Config holds the database configurations.
type Config struct {
  Address  string `default:"localhost" env:"DATABASE_HOST"`
  Port     string `default:"28015" env:"DATABASE_SERVICE_PORT"`
  Database string `default:"my-project"`
}

package redis
// Config describes the requirement for redis client.
type Config struct {
  Address  string        `default:"redis-master" env:"REDIS_HOST"`
  Port     string        `default:"6379" env:"REDIS_SERVICE_PORT"`
  Password string        `secret:""`
  DB       int           `default:"0"`
  Expire   time.Duration `default:"5s"`
}

package main



import (
  "encoding/json"

  "github.com/omeid/uconfig"

  "$PROJECT/redis"
  "$PROJECT/database"
)

// Config is our application config.
type Config struct {

  // yes you can have slices.
  Hosts    []string `default:"localhost,localhost.local"`

  Redis    redis.Config
  Database database.Config

}



func main() {

  conf := &Config{}

  files := uconfig.Files{
    {"config.json", json.Unmarshal}
    // you can add more files if you like,
    // they will be applied in the given order.
  }

  c, err := uconfig.Classic(&conf, files)
  if err != nil {
    c.Usage()
    os.Exit(1)
  }

  // use conf as you please.
  fmt.Printf("start with hosts set to: %#v\n", conf.Hosts)

}

Run this program with a bad flag or value would print out the usage like so:

flag provided but not defined: -x

Supported Fields:
FIELD                FLAG                  ENV                      DEFAULT
-----                -----                 -----                    -------
Hosts                -hosts                HOSTS                    localhost,localhost.local
Redis.Address        -redis-address        REDIS_HOST               redis-master
Redis.Port           -redis-port           REDIS_SERVICE_PORT       6379
Redis.Password       -redis-password       REDIS_PASSWORD
Redis.DB             -redis-db             REDIS_DB                 0
Redis.Expire         -redis-expire         REDIS_EXPIRE             5s
Database.Address     -database-address     DATABASE_HOST            localhost
Database.Port        -database-port        DATABASE_SERVICE_PORT    28015
Database.Database    -database-database    DATABASE_DATABASE        my-project

Secrets Plugin

The secret provider allows you to grab the value of a config from anywhere you want. You simply need to implement the func(name string) (value string) function and pass it to the secrets plugin.

Unlike most other plugins, secret requires explicit secret:"" tag, this is because only specific config values like passwords and api keys come from a secret provider, compared to the rest of the config which can be set in various ways.

  // Creds is an example of a config struct that uses secret values.
  type Creds struct {
    // by default, secret plugin will generate a name that is identical
    // to env plugin, SCREAM_SNAKE_CASE, so in this case it will be
    // APIKEY however, following the standard uConfig nesting rules
    // in Config struct below, it becomes CREDS_APIKEY.
    APIKey   string `secret:""`
    // or you can provide your own name, which will not be impacted
    // by nesting or the field name.
    APIToken string `secret:"API_TOKEN"`
  }

  type Config struct {
    Redis   Redis
    Creds   Creds
  }


  conf := &Config{}


   // secret.New accepts a function that maps a secret name to it's value.
   secretPlugin := secret.New(func(name string) (string, error) {
      // you're free to grab the secret based on the name from wherever
      // you please, aws secrets-manager, hashicorp vault, or wherever.
      value, ok := secretSource.Get(name)

      if !ok {
        return "", ErrSecretNotFound
      }

      return value, nil
  })

  // then you can use the secretPlugin with uConfig like any other plugin.
  // Lucky, uconfig.Classic allows passing more plugins, which means
  // you can simply do the following for flags, envs, files, and secrets!
  files := uconfig.Files{
    {"config.json", json.Unmarshal}
  }

  _, err := uconfig.Classic(&value, files, secretPlugin)
  if err != nil {
    t.Fatal(err)
  }

Tests

For tests, you may consider the Must function to set the defaults, like so

package something

import (
  "testing"

  "github.com/omeid/uconfig"
  "github.com/omeid/uconfig/defaults"
)

func TestSomething(t *testing.T) error {

  conf := &YourConfigStruct{}

  // It will panic on error
  uconfig.Must(conf, defaults.New())

  // Use your conf as you please.
}

See the Classic source for how to compose plugins. For more details, see the godoc.

Extending uConfig:

uConfig provides a plugin mechanism for adding new sources of configuration. There are two kind of plugins, Walkers and Visitors.

To implement your own, see the examples.

Visitors

Visitors get a flat view of the configuration struct, which is a flat view of the structs regardless of nesting level, for more details see the flat package documentation.

Plugins that load the configurations from flat structures (e.g flags, environment variables, default tags) are good candidates for this type of plugin. See env plugin for an example.

Walkers

Walkers are used for configuration plugins that take the whole config struct and unmarshal the underlying content into the config struct. Plugins that load the configuration from files are good candidates for this.

See file plugin for an example.