Assignment 2

Config File Generator

We are going to start our long term project for this semester with a tool that will manage a settings or configuration file that the rest of our programs will use to configure themselves.

It is very likely this program will change often so attention to detail and good coding habits will make your life much easier in the future.

Here is what you will build:

Config File Generator

A configuration file is usually a human readable file that holds the information for how an application or suite of applications will work. Lets take a look at a config file you already have as an example:

[user]
	email = [email protected]
	name = Paul Scarrone
[merge]
	tool = sublime
[alias]
  pretty = log --graph --pretty=format:'%Cred%h%Creset -%C(yellow)%d%Creset %s %Cgreen(%cr) %C(bold blue)<%an>%Creset' --abbrev-commit --date=relative
  cleanup = "!git branch --merged | grep  -v '\\*\\|master\\|develop' | xargs -n 1 git branch -d"
[core]
	editor = eval $SUBL -n -w
	excludesfile = /Users/samuraipanzer/.gitignore_global
[mergetool "sublime"]
	cmd = eval $SUBL -w $MERGED
	trustExitCode = false
[push]
	default = simple
[filter "lfs"]
	clean = git-lfs clean %f
	smudge = git-lfs smudge %f
	required = true
[difftool "sourcetree"]
	cmd = opendiff \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\"
	path =
[mergetool "sourcetree"]
	cmd = /Applications/SourceTree.app/Contents/Resources/opendiff-w.sh \"$LOCAL\" \"$REMOTE\" -ancestor \"$BASE\" -merge \"$MERGED\"
	trustExitCode = true

The above is a .gitconfig file it is how git knows who you are and how it should do its job. Items like [merge] and [user] are section headers and indented lines below are the configurations for that section. Your file does not need to look like this. There are a great number of standards for config files. JSON, YAML, XML, and custom ones just to name a few.

Your program will act in two ways first it will accept the init and edit arguments:

When the init argument is used the program will ask a series of questions

1. Enter your name(First and Last)
2. Enter your email address
3. Enter your unique cypher(don't user your real password just make something up)
4. Enter your timezone-offset(probably -5:00 for all of us)
5. Enter path to knownrecipients file:

• If the user fails to enter a value for any of these fields it should prompt them and ask them to enter the input again with the exception of the last field.
• If the user does not enter the knownrecipients path provide a default that is in the same directory as the file was executed.

When the edit argument is used it must also include a field to edit

eg: Assuming our program is called gen gen edit name will prompt the user with only the prompt for name and update the config file's name field. It should do this without losing any information previously stored in the file.

You get to decide how the data should be formatted in your file but remember it should be human readable. Please include you config file generated in your repo.

How to write the program:

• Use the full definition of the main function for your program entry point int main(int argc, char *argv[]) this variant allows your program to accept arguments from the command line.
• Update you Build Configuration to pass some arguments to your program on run to make testing easier. See the included image:
• To access your arguments you are going to need use array syntax. argv is the array that contains the arguments and this is how they are ordered
  1. arg 0 is the execution path of the file accessible with argv[0]
  2. arg 1 is the first argument argument1 accessible with argv[1]
  3. arg 2 is the second argument argument2 accessible with argv[2]
  4. this keeps going on if there are more arguments accessible with argv[<a number>]
• Remember that when you press play in CLion the file executed is not in the project folder but in the path listed at the top of the Run console. If you want you can run this from windows command console or create run configurations in CLion for each set of arguments you want to test.
• You should provide useful prompts to the user when running init or edit.
• In the event of edit it would be nice if the program shows the value stored currently when prompting you for a new value.

HINTS

• When comparing the values of argv[1] to strings you make run into some trouble. It is because argv is an array of characters and "things" in quotes are strings. To compare them use this incantation static_cast<string>(argv[1]) == "init" which type casts the character array to a string before comparing it against the literal "init"