IniParse <img src=“https://secure.travis-ci.org/antw/iniparse.png” alt=“Build Status” />¶ ↑

IniParse is a pure Ruby library for parsing INI configuration and data files.

• Support for duplicate options. While not common, some INI files contain an option more than once. IniParse does not overwrite previous options, but allows you to access all of the duplicate values.

• Preservation of white space and blank lines. When writing back to your INI file, line indents, white space and comments (and their indents) are preserved. Only trailing white space (which has no significance in INI files) will be removed.

• Preservation of section and option ordering. Sections and options are kept in the same order they are in the original document ensuring that nothing gets mangled when writing back to the file.

If you don’t need the above mentioned features, you may find the simpler IniFile gem does all you need.

Parsing an INI file is fairly simple:

IniParse.parse( File.read('path/to/my/file.ini') ) # => IniParse::Document

IniParse.parse returns an IniParse::Document instance which represents the passed “INI string”. Assuming you know the structure of the document, you can access the sections in the INI document with IniParse::Document#[]. For example:

document = IniParse.parse( File.read('path/to/my/file.ini') )

document['a_section']
  # => IniParse::Lines::Section

document['a_section']['an_option']
  # => "a value"
document['a_section']['another_option']
  # => "another value"

In the event that duplicate options were found, an array of the values will be supplied to you.

document = IniParse.parse <<-EOS
  [my_section]
  key = value
  key = another value
  key = a third value
EOS

document['my_section']['key']
  # => ['value', 'another value', 'third value']

Options which appear before the first section will be added to a section called “__anonymous__”.

document = IniParse.parse <<-EOS
  driver = true

  [driver]
  key = value
EOS

document['__anonymous__']['driver']
  # => true

document['driver']['key']
  # => 'value'

document['a_section']['an_option']
  # => "a value"
document['a_section']['an_option'] = 'a new value'
document['a_section']['an_option']
  # => "a new value"

Delete entire sections by calling ‘#delete` with the section name…

document.delete('a_section')

… or a single option with ‘#delete` on the section object:

document['a_section'].delete('an_option')

See IniParse::Generator.