How do I provide basic configuration for a Scala application?

Question

I am working on a small GUI application written in Scala. There are a few settings that the user will set in the GUI and I want them to persist between program executions. Basically I want a scala.collections.mutable.Map that automatically persists to a file when modified.

This seems like it must be a common problem, but I have been unable to find a lightweight solution. How is this problem typically solved?

Answer 1

I do a lot of this, and I use .properties files (it's idiomatic in Java-land). I keep my config pretty straight-forward by design, though. If you have nested config constructs you might want a different format like YAML (if humans are the main authors) or JSON or XML (if machines are the authors).

Here's some example code for loading props, manipulating as Scala Map, then saving as .properties again:

import java.io._
import java.util._
import scala.collection.JavaConverters._

val f = new File("test.properties")
// test.properties:
//   foo=bar
//   baz=123

val props = new Properties

// Note: in real code make sure all these streams are 
// closed carefully in try/finally
val fis = new InputStreamReader(new FileInputStream(f), "UTF-8")
props.load(fis)
fis.close()

println(props) // {baz=123, foo=bar}

val map = props.asScala // Get to Scala Map via JavaConverters
map("foo") = "42"
map("quux") = "newvalue"

println(map)   // Map(baz -> 123, quux -> newvalue, foo -> 42)
println(props) // {baz=123, quux=newvalue, foo=42}

val fos = new OutputStreamWriter(new FileOutputStream(f), "UTF-8")
props.store(fos, "")
fos.close()