Loading ini data from memory

It can be useful to load data from memory instead of a file, e.g. if you store INI files in a compressed file and read them yourself.

LoadBuffer

MiniINI allows loading INI data from memory using the LoadBuffer method of INIFile. This tutorial explains how to read a simple INI file to memory and parse it using LoadBuffer. You can find example code in example/LoadBuffer directory in the MiniINI package.

The code

Create a file called example.ini in your project directory, with these contents:

[section]
answer=42

First, we include what we need and start the main function.

#include<miniini.h>
#include<iostream>
#include<fstream>

int main()
{

Then we load the file from memory. (Static array is used for the sake of simplicity. In real use, you'd determine file size and allocate enough space dynamically.) In order for LoadBuffer to work properly, you must add a trailing zero to the end of the buffer. Also, you can only call LoadBuffer on an INIFile that has not yet been loaded (using OpenFile or LoadBuffer).

    char buf[64];
    std::ifstream fin( "example.ini" );
    fin.read(buf, 63);
    if(fin.bad())
        std::cout << "ERROR: Could not read from example.ini";
    buf[63] = '\0';

Now we create an INIFile and use LoadBuffer to initialize it. LoadBuffer takes two arguments: buffer to read from and size of that buffer (including the trailing zero). It returns true if the buffer was successfully loaded, false otherwise.

    INIFile ini;
    if(!ini.LoadBuffer(buf, 64))
        std::cout << "ERROR: error in parsing ini file data";

Finally, we read and print data from the INIFile to test if everything works correctly, and end the main function.

    INISection * section = ini.GetSection("section");
    if(!section)
        std::cout << "ERROR: Missing section [section]" << std::endl;
    int answer;
    if(!section->ReadInt("answer", answer))
        std::cout << "ERROR: Missing tag answer=" << std::endl;
    std::cout << "The answer is " << answer;
    return 0;
}

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Last update: 07-07-2010