envconfig

An environment variable configuration mapper for Crystal. Uses syntax similar to JSON, YAML, and DB shards to map environment variables to a Crystal class. It's small.

Features:

• Automatic conversion from env vars to config settings with type conversion
• Default values that can be overridden
• Required fields
• Optional fields
• CLI help output
• Application configuration printing with redaction

What Problem Does This Solve?

Containerized applications or other 12-factor apps often rely on environment variables to configure themselves. Repeatedly writing code to read variables from ENV[] and then manually doing type conversion, nil checking, etc is just annoying.

Application configs commonly need the same sets of utility methods, as well. Things like CLI help output, and startup config printing (with redaction).

Other languages have packages for making this easy. Here's one for Crystal.

Installation

1. Add the dependency to your shard.yml:

   dependencies:
     envconfig:
       github: relistan/envconfig.cr
   

2. Run shards install

Usage

require "envconfig"

class TestConfig
  EnvConfig.mapping({
    prefix:      {type: String, default: "l/", nilable: false, help: "URL prefix for redirects"},
    redis_host:  {type: String, default: "localhost", nilable: false, help: "Redis hostname to connect to"},
    redis_port:  {type: Int32,  default: "6379", nilable: false, help: "Redis port to connect to"},
    redis_pool:  {type: Int32,  default: "200", nilable: false, help: "Redis connection pool size"},
    listen_port: {type: Int32,  default: "8087", nilable: false, help: "Port to listen on"},
    default_url: {type: String, nilable: false, help: "The default redirect URL"},
    ssl_urls:    {type: Bool,   default: "false", nilable: false, help: "Generate HTTPS URLs?"},
    unset_thing: {type: Int64,  nilable: true}
    }, "TEST"
  )
end

config = TestConfig.new
puts config.redis_host

# OR dump all the values to a pretty-printed output
config.print_config()

The mapping() macro supports all the fields above, with the same meaning as the JSON module in the stdlib.

The final argument to mapping() is a prefix to place in front of all your environment variables to prevent namespace collisions.

Printing Help Output

You may call the generated class method help() to generate usage information, including the available settings and types, and their default values. If the help symbol is included in the mapping, its text will also be displayed. It looks like this:

Usage:
  The following vars apply. Types and defaults shown:

    TEST_PREFIX (String) - URL Prefix for redirects [l/]
    TEST_REDIS_HOST (String) - Redis hostname [localhost]
    TEST_REDIS_PORT (Int32) - Redis port [6379]
    TEST_REDIS_POOL (Int32) - Redis pool size [200]
    TEST_LISTEN_PORT (Int32) - Port to listen on [8087]
    TEST_DEFAULT_URL (String) - Default URL to send redirects to [*REQUIRED*]
    TEST_SSL_URLS (Bool) - Generate HTTPS URLs? [false]
    TEST_UNSET_THING (Int64) -  [*NIL*]

You call it e.g. TestConfig.help() as a class method, not an instance method. This prevents having to initialize all the fields before printing. Example usage in an application:

(TestConfig.help; exit 1) if !ARGV.empty? && ["-h", "--help", "-help"].includes?(ARGV[0])

Fields that are nilable and have no default show *NIL*, while those without defaults that are not nilable show *REQUIRED*.

The displayed text comes from the help field in the mapping definition.

Printing Current Settings

Output from the pretty-printer print_config() looks like this:

Settings ---------------------------------------------
  *             prefix: "l/"
  *         redis_host: "localhost"
  *         redis_port: 6379
  *         redis_pool: 200
  *        listen_port: 8087
  *        default_url: "http://example.com/"
  *           ssl_urls: false
-------------------------------------------------------

This is useful when debugging what was actually set.

You may optionally pass a block to print_config that will be used to obfuscate config values that should not be displayed. This is a block that will be passed the key and value for each and is expected to return a string. Something like:

config.print_config do |key, val|
  if key =~ /redis/
    "xxxx"
  else
    val.inspect
  end
end

Contributing

1. Fork it (https://github.com/your-github-user/envconfig/fork)
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request

Contributors

• Karl Matthias - creator and maintainer