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I would like to expose the settings and statistics of my program in a 'everything is a file' manner - sort of how /proc/ and /sys/ works.
As an example, imagine for a moment that apache2 had this type of interface. You would then be able to do something like this (hypothetical):
cd /apache2/virtual_hosts
mkdir 172.20.30.50
cd 172.20.30.50
echo '/www/example1' > DocumentRoot
echo 'www.example1.com' > ServerName
echo 1 > control/enabled
cat control/status
enabled true
uptime 4080
hits 0
Now, are there any tutorials or similar on how to do this? I'm mainly looking for techniques for 'pretending to be a file or dir'. I'm on linux, POSIX or other more portable method would be preferable, but not required.
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Everything is a file describes one of the defining features of Unix, and its derivatives—that a wide range of input/output resources such as documents, directories, hard-drives, modems, keyboards, printers and even some inter-process and network communications are simple streams of bytes exposed through the filesystem ...
In a computer, a file system -- sometimes written filesystem -- is the way in which files are named and where they are placed logically for storage and retrieval. Without a file system, stored information wouldn't be isolated into individual files and would be difficult to identify and retrieve.
Stdin, stdout, and stderr On a Unix-like operating system, the first three file descriptors, by default, are STDIN (standard input), STDOUT (standard output), and STDERR (standard error).
Files are used for all input and output (I/O) of information in the operating system, to standardize access to both software and hardware. Input occurs when the contents of a file is modified or written to. Output occurs when the contents of one file is read or transferred to another file.
On Linux, have a look at Fuse: implement a fully functional filesystem in a userspace program.
Look at compatible platforms here. In terms of tutorial, one of good ones I've came across is here.
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In addition to FUSE, another solution is to export a 9p filesystem. wmii does this, for example.
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