stevensonmt
Using TOML for user-specified runtime config
I’m starting to work on my first real app and can’t quite understand the runtime configuration story. I would like to use a TOML file to hold the configuration data. My plan is to look for this config.toml file in the path $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/my_app/config.toml or perhaps even iterate through $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS appending /myapp/config.toml to each until one is found. If no file is found a default config will be included.
I would like to use the Toml library to parse the config but I’m not following the guidance on organizing the configuration from the docs. I’m also not clear on how one would access the config data later.
From here I gather I need a config/runtime.exs to fetch the configuration data. I assume this is where the code suggested in the Toml docs goes:
# config/runtime.exs
config_providers: [
{Toml.Provider, [
path: {:system, "XDG_CONFIG_DIR", "myapp.toml",
transforms: [...]
]}
]
So let’s say I have something like this snippet of the example from the Toml docs:
# This is an example of something that would be ignored
title = "My config file"
# We're expecting something like this:
[myapp]
key = "value"
How do I later access myapp.key to use “value”?
I’m wondering if it’s Applicationg.get_env/3?
Marked As Solved
cmo
If you’re using the Toml config provider because you don’t want to use runtime.exs, then don’t use runtime.exs. They’re two different sources of config. One does not load the other. You could use both if you want to confuse yourself or if you want the runtime.exs stuff ever so slightly further out of reach than the config.toml.
And yes, config is retrieved with Application.get_env and friends.
Also Liked
cmo
You can also use something like Vapor.
stevensonmt
Excellent. Thanks for your help. I’m trying not to assume end users would be familiar with Elixir but would be with TOML.







