BetterConfig

A very powerful and easy to use command based configuration library for servers and clients.

Creating a simple configuration

To start, create a new class. This will be the class where all your configurations are stored. For this example, we'll call this class Configs. Make sure that this class is public! Next, create a field for your configuration entry. The field should not be final. Mark this field with the annotation @Config. The initial value of the field will be used as default (fallback) value. You can add a comment by setting the comment attribute.

public class Configs {
    @Config(comment = "This is an example!")
    public static String exampleString = "default";
}

Finally, register your Configs class.

• For Fabric users, register the Configs class in your mod's onInitialize(Client) method. Replace <mod id> with your mod's id. Sometimes you may omit the generics and just do <> instead.
  • On clients:

    new ModConfigBuilder<FabricClientCommandSource, CommandBuildContext>(<mod id>, Configs.class).build();

  • On servers:

    new ModConfigBuilder<CommandSourceStack, CommandBuildContext>(<mod id>, Configs.class).build();

• For Paper users, register the Configs class in your plugin's onEnable method. Replace <plugin name> with your plugin's name.

  new ModConfigBuilder<>(<plugin name>, Configs.class).build();

That's it! Now you can access exampleString through Configs.exampleString. You can edit exampleString by using the config command.

• On Fabric there are different commands for the client and server. For both, replace <mod id> with your mod's id.
  • On clients, execute /cconfig <mod id> exampleString set <string>.
  • On servers, execute /config <mod id> exampleString set <string>.
• On Paper servers, execute /config <plugin name> exampleString set <string>. Replace <plugin name> with your plugin's name.

That's not all!

This mod also natively supports the use of Collections and Maps as variable types. These configurations will have the options add, put and remove available. Moreover, you can define your own (de)serialisers to create configurations with arbitrary types. To do this, all you have to do is register the (de)serialiser when you build your config. For instance, to create configurations with type Block you can do

new ModConfigBuilder<>(<mod id>, Configs.class)
    .registerTypeHierarchy(Block.class, new BlockAdapter(), BlockArgumentType::block)
    .build();

where BlockAdapter extends TypeAdapter<Block> and BlockArgumentType implements ArgumentType<Block>. See these tests for a complete picture. An identical setup for Paper can be found here.

Furthermore, you can completely change the behaviour of updating your config values by creating your own methods. Simply add one or more of setter, adder, putter or remover as attribute to your @Config annotation. A great use for this would be adding key-value entries to a Map based on a single value. Consider the following configuration.

@Config(putter = @Config.Putter("none"), adder = @Config.Adder("customMapAdder"))
public static Map<String, String> exampleMapAdder = new HashMap<>(Map.of("a", "A", "b", "B"));
public static void customMapAdder(String string) {
    exampleMapAdder.put(string.toLowerCase(Locale.ROOT), string.toUpperCase(Locale.ROOT));
}

The value of "none" for the putter indicates that no putter will be available. This way, you can use this Map in your code like usual, and add values to it using /(c)config <mod id> exampleMapAdder add <string>. For more details, see the JavaDocs for @Config.

The parameters of the update method can also be customised.

@Config(adder = @Config.Adder(value = "customTypeAdder", type = int.class))
public static Collection<String> exampleCustomType = new ArrayList<>(List.of("%", "@"));
public static void customTypeAdder(int codepoint) {
    exampleCustomType.add(Character.toString(codepoint));
}

For putters, there are separate key and value type attributes.

And many more things! For some illustrative examples, see the Configs class for both Fabric and Paper.

Installation

Replace ${betterconfig_version} with the artifact version.

You may choose between my own maven repository and GitHub's package repository.

My own

repositories {
    maven {
        url 'https://maven.xpple.dev/maven2'
    }
}

GitHub packages

repositories {
    maven {
        url 'https://maven.pkg.github.com/xpple/BetterConfig'
        credentials {
            username = project.findProperty("gpr.user") ?: System.getenv("USERNAME")
            password = project.findProperty("gpr.key") ?: System.getenv("TOKEN")
        }
    }
}

Import it:

dependencies {
    // Fabric
    include modImplementation('dev.xpple:betterconfig-fabric:${betterconfig_version}')
    // Paper (also include the JAR in the plugins folder)
    compileOnly 'dev.xpple:betterconfig-paper:${betterconfig_version}'
}