Usage

#Usage

#Source the script

You need to source the ini.class.sh file in your script.

cd $( dirname $0 )
. vendor/ini.class.sh || exit 1

With ini.help you get a help with the basic functions.

#Get values directly

This is the maybe most used feature: give me a value from an ini file in a given section.

ini.value "<inifile>" "<section>" "<key>"

Get a value from ini file using ini.value with 3 parameters:

• filename of ini file
• name of the section to read
• key / variable in the given section

Example

If our ini file named settings.inilooks like this:

[general]
...

[database]
server = localhost
port = 3306
...

Bash:

server=$( ini.value "settings.ini" "database" "server" )
echo "Server is $server" 
# shows "Server is localhost"

#Video demo

Let’s have look to the most relevant ini functions in a video.

#Shorter way to get values

Remark: Using the short variant can result in unwanted behaviuor when jumping between different ini files using the shorten syntax for all. It is just bash :-)

If you read multiple values from the same section, you can use set file and maybe section too.

ini.set "<inifile>"

Get a value from ini file using ini.value with 2 parameters:

• section
• key

OR

ini.set "<inifile>" <section> to shorten the access with the key only.

Example:

ini.set /path/to/initfile
ini.setsection database

# it can be combined too
# ini.set /path/to/initfile database

# and then you can access of the pre defined file and action
ini.value "server"

# or access another sction
ini.value "othersection" "varname"

#Other functions

#Get section names

ini.sections "<inifile>"

It returns a list of all section names without brackets.

general
database
...

#Get a section

ini.section "<inifile>" <section>

returns the subset from inifile with the given section name. All comments of it are removed.

key1 = "value 1"
key2 = "value 2"
...

#Get variable names of a section

ini.keys "<inifile>" <section>

returns the variable names of a section in alphabetic order

key1
key2
...

#Dump

With ini.dump "<inifile>" you get a colored output of the ini file and its parsed sections, keys and values.

Use this function if you don’t get an expected value.

#Validate

There is an option to validate the syntax of your ini file with a given validation configuration.

ini.validate "<inifile>" "<validate.ini>" [<flag>]

The <flag> is optional. By default it is 0 and shows error information only on STDOUT. Set it to 1 to see more output about the validation process.

See next chapter for more details for the validation syntax.