Crate miniconf_parser 

MiniConf Parser Documentation

MiniConf is a lightweight, human-friendly configuration format that keeps everything in plain text. This crate bundles a reusable parser library, a reference command-line interface, and the original pest grammar so you can validate or embed MiniConf in your own tools with zero boilerplate.

Feature Highlights

• ergonomic AST (Document, Section, Value) with iterator helpers for traversing sections and entries
• duplicate-key detection plus clear diagnostics powered by thiserror
• flexible value parsing: bare/quoted strings, integers, floats, booleans (true/false/yes/no), and arrays like [one, two]
• batteries-included CLI for parsing, validating, and exporting as pretty text or JSON

Installation

Library users can add the dependency with:

cargo add miniconf-parser

To install the CLI:

cargo install miniconf-parser

cargo install --path . works when hacking locally.

Library Quick Start

use miniconf_parser::{parse_str, Value};

let source = "[service]\nport = 8080\n";
let doc = parse_str(source)?;
let port_entry = doc
    .section("service")
    .and_then(|section| section.entries.iter().find(|entry| entry.key == "port"))
    .expect("port entry");
let port = match &port_entry.value {
    Value::Number(n) => *n,
    _ => unreachable!("ports stay numeric"),
};
assert_eq!(8080.0, port);

Every parse error provides byte offsets and friendly messages, making it easy to surface diagnostics in editors or servers.

CLI Usage

• miniconf-parser parse config.mc – parse the file and pretty-print sections and key/value pairs.
• miniconf-parser parse config.mc -f json -o config.json – export the AST as JSON to a file.
• miniconf-parser check config.mc – validate without printing; exits non-zero on failure.

Passing --help reveals all options, and both commands accept relative or absolute paths. The CLI prints colored checkmarks when validation succeeds.

Grammar Overview

The PEG grammar lives in src/grammar.pest. Key rules:

1. section_header = { "[" ~ ASCII_ALPHANUMERIC+ ~ ( "-" | "_" )* ~ "]" }
2. key_value = { key ~ "=" ~ value ~ comment? }
3. comment = { "#" ~ (!NEWLINE ~ ANY)* } Feel free to fork the grammar to extend the format; recompiling via cargo build regenerates the parser.

Development Hints

For contributors, the Makefile exposes make fmt, make clippy, make test, and make doc. Integration tests live under tests/, while runnable examples sit in examples/ for quick experimentation.

Re-exports

pub use ast::Document;

pub use ast::Entry;

pub use ast::Section;

pub use ast::Value;

pub use error::MiniConfError;

pub use error::ParseErrorKind;

Modules

ast

Abstract syntax tree types used to represent parsed documents.

error

Error types emitted by the parser.

parser

Low-level parser utilities and the generated pest machinery.

Functions

parse_str

Convenience function that parses source into a Document.