Giving Nodes Value

Of course, the entire purpose of a configuration file is to be able to write and retrieve data. So, let’s learn about retrieving them first. We’ll continue to use the example path node discussed in the navigation section. (config.blockCheats.enabled)

Reading Values

ConfigurationNode rootNode = loader.createEmptyNode(ConfigurationOptions.defaults());
ConfigurationNode valueNode = rootNode.getNode((Object[]) "config.blockCheats.enabled".split("\\."));

First, we’ll read the value to see if the administrator wants this function enabled. Normally, you can just use the getValue() method and cast it as a boolean. However, to make things easier for us, Configurate has methods to automatically try to read them as booleans, as well as other types, for us. Here, we’ll use the getBoolean(boolean) method to retrieve our value.

boolean blockCheatsEnabled = valueNode.getBoolean(true);

Note the parameter passed to the getBoolean(boolean) method. The parameter is what the method returns if it cannot find a value or finds the value invalid for the given type. This is available for most of the value retrieval methods.

Writing Values

Now, what if we’d like to do the opposite and perhaps write this value to save as a default configuration? Of course, you’ll be able to set these values with setValue(Object). You don’t need to worry about casting it either, Configurate will do that for you.

Note

It will NOT deserialize objects it doesn’t recognize for you, however. Objects that it recognizes are limited to the default types you can seamlessly grab through a convenience getter method, plus the registered mappers that allow it to serialize and deserialize an object into a type mapping that allows you to reload the object’s values. This will be discussed in a different section, but you can also check the official wiki, linked above.

valueNode.setValue(true);

And now that we’ve set our value (or values, if you set multiple, which you can), all that’s left is to save it using the save(ConfigurationNode) method of our ConfigurationLoader. The passed ConfigurationNode should be the root node of your configuration file, the node that is able to list all the values existing within the configuration. Be sure to handle the IOException that can be thrown if saving goes wrong.

try {
    loader.save(rootNode);
} catch(IOException e) {
    //oops!
}