Many workflows need to be configured, and Alphred provides an easy way for you to manage simple configurations. Out of the box, it provides methods to write configuration files as json, ini, or sqlite3. They provide simple key-value pairs.

Note

This is outdated. You can no longer set the handler or the filename through the individual methods. Instead, you have set them either when you instantiate the Alphred object or in a workflow.ini file.

Methods

config_set( $key, $value, $handler, $filename ) config_read( $key, $handler, $filename ) config_delete( $key, $handler, $filename )

Configuration files are kept in your workflow’s data directory.

You do not need to create a config file ahead of time; instead, you just need to use the functions.

$workflow = new Alphred;
$workflow->config_set( 'username', 'shawnrice' );

To read a value (config_read will return null if the value has not been set):

$username = $workflow->config_read( 'username' );

To delete a value, just use

$workflow->config_delete( 'username' );

Handlers

The config methods can use either 1. ini, 2. json, or 3. sqlite3 as a filetype. By default, Alphred uses ini files for configuration. These are simpler because users who open them with something like TextEdit will not break them as easily as json files.

The json and ini versions can handle mutliple dimensional arrays easily. The sqlite version is not as robust yet. Also (this needs to be verified), the sqlite handler will not work with anything pre-Mavericks because the version of sqlite3 that is standard is too old.

Choosing a different handler

If you want to use a different handler, then add it on as an argument in each call:

$workflow = new Alphred;
$workflow->config_set( 'username', 'shawnrice', 'json' );
$workflow->config_read( 'username', 'json' );
$workflow->config_delete( 'username', 'json' );

Changing the filename

By default, Alphred will name the file config with the appropriate extension (ini, json, or sqlite3). If you want to specify a different filename, then pass it as an argument, after the config type.

$workflow = new Alphred;
$workflow->config_set( 'username', 'shawnrice', 'json', 'my-config-filename' );
$workflow->config_read( 'username', 'json', 'my-config-filename' );
$workflow->config_delete( 'username', 'json', 'my-config-filename' );

Changing the handler and filename in workflow.ini

Code will be written to make this happen.