ini

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.

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)

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

parse(inistring)

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.

• 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.

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