Broccolini 🥦

Broccolini is a non-destructive parser for INI files. The main goal is compatibility with the INI format used in Windows OS (GetPrivateProfileString and friends).

Usage

INI file used in examples

[database]
server = 192.0.2.62
port = 1234

Reading

var document = IniParser.ParseToSemanticModel(File.ReadAllText("config.ini"));
string databaseServer = document["database"]["server"];
string databasePort = document["database"]["port"];

Editing

var document = IniParser.Parse(File.ReadAllText("config.ini"));
var updated = document
    .WithSection("owner", section => section.WithKeyValue("name", "John Doe"))
    .UpdateSection("database", section => section.RemoveKeyValue("port"));
File.WriteAllText("config.ini", updated.ToString(), Encoding.Unicode);

Stability

This library is feature-complete and stable. Contributions are welcome, please create an issue first for discussion.

Known Differences

While Broccolini tries to replicate most of the behaviour found in the Windows APIs, there are still some intentional differences:

• GetPrivateProfileString does not support keys or section names that contain NULL characters (\0).
  Broccolini supports such keys and section names.
• While the editing API in Broccolini shares the goal of changing as little as possible, its behaviour does not explicitly replicate the behaviour of WritePrivateProfileString.
• GetPrivateProfileString breaks when a unicode file contains a non-trailing NULL character (\0).
  Broccolini supports such files.

Goals

• Compatibiliy with INI format in Windows OS.
• Roundtrips (Parse → ToString) should preserve everything.
• Editing should preserve as much (whitespace, comments, etc.) as possible.
• An extensive test suite.

Non-Goals

• Deserialization into non-string types (complex objects, numbers, booleans, etc.)
• Customizable parsing rules (e.g. different comment syntax)
• Performance