What is StaticSettings?

StaticSettings is a header-only library allowing you to setup different type settings (properties) for your application (or its part) and access them from anywhere in a uniform and thread safe manner. It is not a Singleton, but it mostly consists of static variables, hence the name.

How to use it

First of all you must define an entity with some properties in enum class:

enum class Label
{
    Size,
    Text,
    Weight,
};

Then you must declare actual types for these properties:

DECLARE_PROPERTY_TYPE( property::Label, property::Label::Size, int )
DECLARE_PROPERTY_TYPE( property::Label, property::Label::Text, std::string )
DECLARE_PROPERTY_TYPE( property::Label, property::Label::Weight, double )

And you're ready to use them from anywhere:

alt::StaticSettings::setProperty<Label, Label::Size>( 10 );
alt::StaticSettings::setProperty<Label, Label::Text>( "Label name" );
auto labelSize = alt::StaticSettings::getProperty<Label, Label::Size>();
auto labelText = alt::StaticSettings::getProperty<Label, Label::Text>();

For full demo including thread safe testing see provided example.

Note: Properties doesn't have a default value, so getting it before it's been set will raise an exception.

Benefits

• Produces compile time error:
  • If you use a property and haven't declared its type
  • If you use a property and have declared its type more than once
  • If you set a property value of type that cannot be casted to property type
• Can use custom types in property declaration
• Uniform access to properties regardless of declared types
• Property change subscription
• Thread safe
• Small codebase (around 100 lines)

Dependencies

General:

• C++14

Embedded into the example source code for testing purpose (not needed for usage):

• ThreadSafePrinter

Library

• Boost 1.39.0
  • Boost.Any
  • Boost.Signals2

Note: As the library itself cannot include above-mentioned libraries, you will have to do it for your project. In case of boost it's quite easy, just download, extract and point to it.

Note: If you're using C++17 compiler and don't need a subscription to property change, in the source code remove Signaller struct and all calls to it, replace Boost.Any with std::any and you will have no dependencies at all.

Versioning

StaticSettings uses Semantic Versioning 2.0.0.

License

StaticSettings is licensed under MIT License.