Midgard websites and applications often have a lot of configurationinformation and specialities that are mainly in the minds of the original developer and cannot easily be accessed by others. This RFC wants to do something about this.

Deprecation notice: This mRFC has been deprecated with the MidCOM 2.4 component base classes which provide easy way for component authors to create an user interface to the configuration options.

The selfdocumenting component

The main goal is that all components should document the different configuration options they choose to use, and how these options should be stored so that it is easy for other administrators to edit these settings.

To do this we need to have a format for documenting different configuration variables.

Midgard applications and mRFC0004

This mRFC only describes the format for making a configurationschema and in time it will also document the API for reading/writing configurations.

Also, this RFC defines which applications should follow this RFC. This will be updated as new components and applications define there relationship to mRFC004.

MidCom and mRFC0004

Every Midcom should create a snippet called config_schema in the _conf snippetdirectory that conforms with the configschema in this RFC that defines the configuration options available.

AIS will provide an interface for editing the sitegroupwide configurationoptions. The user will be able to create new configurationoptions on a topicbasis as well. Changes done to the configuration on the topiclevel overrides the ones done on the sitegrouplevel.

Schemaformats for configurationfiles

There are two options here:
1) Use a phparray that describes the options available.
The array has the form: (Note the variable name)

$MIDGARD_CONFIG = array ( storage => 'params | array' ,

nodes => array (

[node_name] = array (

'name' => string [field_name]

'comment' => string [node_comment]

'type' => string [ boolean|string|multienum|section]

'params' => array ( [type_params ])
'default' => string,
'advaced' => boolean // defaults to no if not set

)

)

);

Descriptions of the elements:
storage = How to store the configurationoptions, either as midgard
parameters or as a complete array in a snippet.

name = the displayname of the configurationoption.
Example: "Redirect login"

comment = A comment to the option.
Example: "If you say yes here, the user will be redirected back to the page he logged in from after a sucessfull login"

type = Type of configurationvariable.
params = array of prameters that help define the option.
Example:
type=> multienum, params => array ( 'live' , 'staging', 'midcom');

default = the default sensible value of this option.
advanced = if this option is defined as advanced and not an option a user should have to deal with from day to day, this parameter should be set.

2) Use a modified version of Horde_config class to parse xmlfiles thatm describe the options available.

References:
Horde_Config class:
http://cvs.horde.org/co.php/framework/Horde/Horde/Config.php?r=1.68