IniGenerator

I wrote a simple C# code interface for ini files. There are already great NuGet packages for ini file IO parsing and writing, but not a lot of packages that automatically generate a code layer. For this project I based my solution on the ini parser to do the file IO.

My package only provides a small overlay to create a C# class which handles all the file IO behind the scenes. Using the text-templates, we define both the ini file and create a C# class. An example file I used to create my configuration:

<#@ include file="$(ProjectDir)IniTemplate.tt" #>
<#
    // All properties in the ini file
    // Name, default value and category
    CreateProperty("Width", 1280, "Video");
    CreateProperty("Height", 720, "Video");
    CreateProperty("Fullscreen", false, "Video");

    // Generate the code layer
    GenerateIniClass();
#>

Which will create a C# class with the same name as your text-template. The ini file will either be created the first time you use this class, or the old values will be read from the existing file.

Usually there is no backwards compatibility with older versions of the ini file. If you add new properties, all values in the ini file will be reset to their defaults. I avoid these scenarios using the beautiful functionality to merge two ini files from the ini parser. I can simply add the new properties to the old ini file without changing their values.

Finally, an example of the above template used in code:

// Use the namespace where you placed the template
using IniGenerator.Content.Generated;

// Name of ini file
var config = new Config();
// Can be used directly in code without parsing
var size = new Size(config.Width, config.Height);
var fullscreen = config.Fullscreen;

You can view the source code on GitHub, or download the package from NuGet.

If you have any feedback, leave a comment or post an issue on the GitHub project.