Creating a simple configuration file and parser in

Question

I am trying to create a simple configuration file that looks like this

url = http://mysite.com
file = main.exe
true = 0

when the program runs, I would like it to load the configuration settings into the programs variables listed below.

string url, file;
bool true_false;

I have done some research and this link seemed to help (nucleon's post) but I can't seem to get it to work and it is too complicated to understand on my part. Is there a simple way of doing this? I can load the file using ifstream but that is as far as I can get on my own. Thanks!

Answer 1

How about formatting your configuration as JSON, and using a library like jsoncpp?

e.g.

{"url": "http://mysite dot com",
"file": "main.exe",
"true": 0}

You can then read it into named variables, or even store it all in a std::map, etc. The latter means you can add options without having to change and recompile your configuration parser.

Answer 2

libconfig is very easy, and what's better, it uses a pseudo json notation for better readability.

Easy to install on Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install libconfig++8-dev

and link: -lconfig++

Answer 3

I was looking for something that worked like the python module ConfigParser and found this: https://github.com/jtilly/inih

This is a header only C++ version of inih.

inih (INI Not Invented Here) is a simple .INI file parser written in C. It's only a couple of pages of code, and it was designed to be small and simple, so it's good for embedded systems. It's also more or less compatible with Python's ConfigParser style of .INI files, including RFC 822-style multi-line syntax and name: value entries.