Store application properties along with their documentation in a neat Markdown file and load them using this library.
Comments in property files tend to be not that appealing to the eye. The main reason is the lack of possibilities to format the text written in these files. A different approach would be to write a separate documentation supporting these features, which has the downside, that the location and prescense of these files needs to be known by users and developers.
The question is: Why should a property file not be configuration and well-readable documentation at the same time? Markdown supports a easy-to-learn and powerful way to write nicely formatted text. Storing, reading and configuring properties could be done with any text editor.
For a small example and giving you an idea of what this project is about you can view the project's Example Properties file.
Storing documentation and the property values in one file (which supports text formatting) saves the developer and the user time and configuration errors.
This library is written to support the CommonMark Markdown specification.
To embed your property configuration inside a Markdown file you specify a code block like this:
```property:here.goes.the.property.key
And here goes the value
```
For a more detailled example you can view the Example Properties
Loading Properties in your code can then be done like this:
Properties mdProperties = new MarkdownProperties();
mdProperties.load(ClassLoader.class.getResourceAsStream("/example-properties.md"));You may notice MarkdownProperties extends java.util.Properties and can be used like a "normal" Properties instance.
Storing Properties is not supported by this library. Calling store or storeAsXML methods will behave like the standard Property class methods.
You can get the library via Maven
<dependency>
<groupId>com.github.error418.properties</groupId>
<artifactId>markdown-properties</artifactId>
<version>0.0.2</version>
</dependency>