DynamicConfiguration.md

Dynamic Configuration

Sometimes having just setters and getters is not enough or you need to get a configuration key by name you know only at runtime. That's where dynamic configuration comes in place.

With dynamic configuration you can declare methods in configuration interface, not just properties. Have a look at this example:

public interface ICallableConfig
{
   string GetName(string keyName);
}

Calling the method will make Config.Net to read configuration using with key set to Name.value of keyName. For instance calling this method as .GetName("my_key") will return a value by key Name.my_key.

The first part of the key comes from the method name itself (any Get or Set method prefixes are removed automatically). The [Option] attribute applies here if you'd like to customise the key name i.e.

public interface ICallableConfig
{
   [Option(Alias = "CustomName")]
   string GetName(string keyName);
}

changes the key to CustomName.value of keyName.

Please take a special note that if you call a method just Get(string name) Config.Net will read settings from a root namespace i.e. Get("myprop") will return a value by key myprop. Essentially this allows you to read from the store dynamically, however you are losing the ability of performing type safe conversions.

Multiple Parameters

You can declare a method with as many parameters as you want, they will be simply chained together when deciding which key name to use, for example:

public interface ICallableConfig
{
   string GetName(string keyName, string subKeyName);
}

will read configuration with key Name.value of keyName.value of subKeyName etc.

Writing Values

The same way as you declare a method to read values, you can also declare methods for writing values. The only difference is that a method which writes values must be void. The last parameter of a writing method is considered a value parameter, for example:

public interface ICallableConfig
{
   void SetName(string keyName, string value);
}