An ini format parser and serializer for node.

Sections are treated as nested objects. Items before the first heading are saved on the object directly.

Differences from https://github.com/npm/ini

Code Improvements

• Tests fixed for EOL on different systems
• Readability fixes
• Modernised code

New inlineArrays option

An inlineArrays option to parse the following. This is common in Unreal Engine games.

    sServerAdmins=12345
    sServerAdmins=54321
    sServerAdmins=09876

Previously, only the last sServerAdmins would be retained and the previous ones would be stripped. Now, when this option is passed, this is parsed into an array: [12345, 54321, 09876]

New defaultValue option

An defaultValue option when decoding to use when encountering a key without a value.

    key=
    secondkey

Previously both keys would contain the value true, now both keys would contain whatever this option is set to, or an empty string if this option is not set. This is a breaking change, and will decode some inputs differently.

New forceStringifyKeys optoin

Sometimes you need to write strings into an ini file with quotes around them, such as:

    key="some string"

By passing an array of forceStringifyKeys, you can specify which keys are forced stringified with JSON.stringify and therefore maintain their quotes. Note: This is pretty limited currently in that it doesn't account for the same key being in different sections, but covers our current use-case.

New allowEmptySection option

If you want to allow empty sections, you can set this option to true.

    [section]

Previously, this would omit the section entirely on encode. Now, it will be included in the output.

New exactValue option

If you want to preserve all characters in a value, you can set this option to true.

    key=some string ; comment

Previously, this would be parsed as some string and not some string ; comment.

Usage

Consider an ini-file config.ini that looks like this:

; this comment is being ignored
scope = global

[database]
user = dbuser
password = dbpassword
database = use_this_database

[paths.default]
datadir = /var/lib/data
array[] = first value
array[] = second value
array[] = third value

You can read, manipulate and write the ini-file like so:

var fs = require('fs')
  , ini = require('ini')

var config = ini.parse(fs.readFileSync('./config.ini', 'utf-8'))

config.scope = 'local'
config.database.database = 'use_another_database'
config.paths.default.tmpdir = '/tmp'
delete config.paths.default.datadir
config.paths.default.array.push('fourth value')

fs.writeFileSync('./config_modified.ini', ini.stringify(config, { section: 'section' }))

This will result in a file called config_modified.ini being written to the filesystem with the following content:

[section]
scope=local
[section.database]
user=dbuser
password=dbpassword
database=use_another_database
[section.paths.default]
tmpdir=/tmp
array[]=first value
array[]=second value
array[]=third value
array[]=fourth value

API

decode(inistring, [options])

Decode the ini-style formatted inistring into a nested object.

The options object may contain the following:

• inlineArrays Whether to parse duplicate key values as an array. See usage above for more info.

parse(inistring, [options])

Alias for decode(inistring)

encode(object, [options])

Encode the object object into an ini-style formatted string. If the optional parameter section is given, then all top-level properties of the object are put into this section and the section-string is prepended to all sub-sections, see the usage example above.

The options object may contain the following:

• section A string which will be the first section in the encoded ini data. Defaults to none.
• inlineArrays Whether to parse duplicate key values as an array. See usage above for more info.
• whitespace Boolean to specify whether to put whitespace around the = character. By default, whitespace is omitted, to be friendly to some persnickety old parsers that don't tolerate it well. But some find that it's more human-readable and pretty with the whitespace.
• allowEmptySection Whether to allow empty sections. Defaults to false.

For backwards compatibility reasons, if a string options is passed in, then it is assumed to be the section value.

stringify(object, [options])

Alias for encode(object, [options])

safe(val)

Escapes the string val such that it is safe to be used as a key or value in an ini-file. Basically escapes quotes. For example

ini.safe('"unsafe string"')

would result in

"\"unsafe string\""

unsafe(val)

Unescapes the string val