Override couscous.yml configuration from command line

[cyberbit]

This doesn't have to be super complex or super smart in my case, but with modifications it could be pretty powerful. More on that in a bit.

I have a project using Couscous that has three instances on three different servers. Documentation is generated out of a repository separate from the project. Because I use customized resources grabbed from the current server, I have to generate three different sets of documentation, changing the baseUrl on each one. I have them listed in couscous.yml, and just comment out the ones I don't need when generating.

Would it be possible to have a command-line syntax to override configuration variables at runtime? Perhaps something like this:

couscous generate --config:baseUrl=http://prod.server.com/ --config:title="Server.com PROD"

Or, to be more advanced (and insane), you could do the above changes and add a built-in configuration selector to shortcut to preset options. For example, in couscous.yml:

title:
    dev: Server.com DEV
    prod: Server.com PROD

description: A fantastic website

baseUrl:
    dev: https://dev.server.com
    prod: https://prod.server.com

At the command-line (--instance could be a more specific form of --config as well, perhaps equivalent to --config:_instance or something):

couscous generate --instance:dev

This would temporarily modify the configuration as if couscous.yml looked like this:

title: Server.com DEV
description: A fantastic website
baseUrl: https://dev.server.com

Admittedly, this is a pipe dream. There are limitations and implications that I recognize with this (selecting instance values in sub-options, restricted keywords, processing modified config file in an additional step, etc.). But even the first suggestion would reduce the amount of manual changes needed to publish correctly for my use case significantly, and feels like it would be easy to medium "hardness."

[mnapoli]

The first option would be very simple to use and understand, I like it! Maybe something a bit more standard like this:

couscous generate --config baseUrl=http://prod.server.com

I think that would be compatible with Symfony's syntax.

Feel free to work on a pull request :)

[cyberbit]

Sounds good to me! If I find time I will certainly try my hand at adding this.

[cyberbit]

Alright, I have something that seems to work well. I just need to work on tests. If I post a pull request here, will it track updates as I push them? I have not done many pull requests here, I'm afraid.

[mnapoli]

@cyberbit yes absolutely, open a PR and you can keep pushing new commits to the same branch, they will appear in the PR (the diff will be updated).

[mnapoli]

Done in #187

[richoconnell]

@cyberbit @mnapoli should this approach work for the template directory and template url configurations?

I've tried a few different variations of property names, quotes, etc., and nothing seems to be getting picked up. I am able to get the override to work for other props, such as baseUrl

For example:

$couscous generate -vvv --target target/couscous2/ --config template.directory=/couscous-template
Generating /workspace to target/couscous2/
[notice] Overriding global config: template.directory = "/couscous-template"

The log message says it parsed it, but from the output I can tell that my override wasn't actually used. I'm trying to implement a process for switching between a template url and directory via a simple switch.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

[cyberbit]

@richoconnell The parsing does not currently support dot properties. It would not be hard to parse out the dot syntax. The particular line is here:

https://github.com/CouscousPHP/Couscous/blob/master/src/Module/Config/Step/OverrideConfigFromCLI.php#L36

And the code context:

foreach ($project->metadata['cliConfig'] as $item) {
    $explosion = explode('=', $item, 2);
    $this->logger->notice('Overriding global config: '.$explosion[0].' = "'.$explosion[1].'"');

    $cliConfig[$explosion[0]] = $explosion[1]; // <<< This line
}

EDIT: If memory serves, Symfony has an array_dot function or something similar that can be used to deeply set an array key.

[richoconnell]

@cyberbit ok, thanks for getting back