Configuration file improvements

[thekid]

Currently the INI file for ConfiguredBindings works as follows:

Type bindings

com.example.ServiceURL=com.example.UseRequest

Instance bindings

web.session.Sessions=web.session.InFileSystem("/tmp")

Named bindings

string[secret]=${secret.ldap-pass}

All of these are in the global section of the INI file.

---

However, there are a couple of problems:

• Most files consist of lots of named string-bindings without any hierarchy or oder
• No support for arrays, we have to use strings and split them, e.g. string[allowed]=172.23.,172.19.,10.30.,10.46.
• Class names can get quite long, and the use=package hack isn't intuitive

Example:

[thekid]

Most files consist of lots of named string-bindings

Maybe adding a section and then names inside would solve this?

[string]
service=${env.SERVICE_URL}
sso="https://login.example.com/sso/"
portal-ldap="ldaps://uid=***:${secret.ldap-pass}@ildap.1and1.com/"

...or by simply testing the value for dots, and if none match, it's a named string?

[thekid]

No support for arrays

This could be solved by the above syntax plus allowing arrays as values:

[string[]]
allowed=["172.23.", "172.19.", "10.30.", "10.46."]

[thekid]

string-bindings without any hierarchy or oder

Grouping logically instead of by type seems to be better:

[service]
url=${env.SERVICE_URL}
base="/signin"

[secrets]
cloud=${secret.cloud-secret}
search=${secret.jwt-search-prod-secret}
hashing=${secret.ldap-pass}

This would create the equivalent of:

{
  service.url: ${env.SERVICE_URL},
  service.base: "/signin",
  secrets.cloud: ${secret.cloud-secret},
  ...
}

[thekid]

Class names can get quite long

...and even longer with argument lists. One idea would be to use sections for binding type and then add class and args, inspired by xp-framework/logging#12, as follows:

[instance]
class=org.oneandone.ambassodor.ServiceValidator
args[]="https://(.+\.)?1and1.org/",
args[]="https://(.+\.)?united-internet.org/",
args[]="https://(.+\.)?server.lan/"

This is incompatible with the above idea of using sections for grouping.

[thekid]

One idea would be to use sections for binding type and then add class and args

Another could be to discourage them alltogether; stating type=class and type=instance bindings should be done in code, and the config files focus only on named strings...