cconfig

A small, dependency-free, single-header C library for parsing configuration files. It provides a robust parser for TOML and a simple, event-driven parser for INI files.

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Features

• TOML & INI Support: Parses the full TOML v1.0.0 spec and the simpler INI format.
• Zero Dependencies: Uses only the C standard library for maximum portability.
• Single-Header Library: Just drop cconfig.h into your project.
• Powerful Query API: Access nested values, including array elements, with a simple dot-and-bracket notation (e.g., "database.ports[0]").
• TOML Serialization: Convert the parsed TOML data structure back into a string.
• Clear error reporting with line and column numbers

Integration

This is a single-header library. To use it, copy cconfig.h into your project and include it.

Then, in one C or C++ source file, define CCONFIG_IMPLEMENTATION before the include to create the implementation.

#define CCONFIG_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "cconfig.h"

All other source files can include cconfig.h normally without the define.

Package Manager Integration

You can easily add cconfig to your project using common C++ package managers.

CMake (FetchContent)

If you are using CMake, you can use FetchContent to download and use cconfig directly from this repository.

# In your CMakeLists.txt

include(FetchContent)

FetchContent_Declare(
  cconfig
  GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/Nouridin/cconfig.git
  GIT_TAG        main # Or a specific version tag like v1.0.0
)

FetchContent_MakeAvailable(cconfig)

# Now you can use the header in your targets
target_include_directories(your_target_name PRIVATE ${cconfig_SOURCE_DIR})

vcpkg

cconfig is officially in VCPKG you can install it:

vcpkg install cconfig

And use it in your CMake project with find_package(cconfig CONFIG REQUIRED).

Quick Start: Parsing TOML

Here is a minimal example of parsing a TOML string and retrieving values.

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

// In one C file, do this:
#define CCONFIG_IMPLEMENTATION
#include "cconfig.h"

const char* my_config =
    "title = \"My App\"\n"
    "port = 8080\n"
    "\n"
    "[database]\n"
    "host = \"127.0.0.1\"\n"
    "enabled = true\n";

int main() {
    char error_buffer[256];
    cconfig_document_t* doc = cconfig_parse(my_config, error_buffer, sizeof(error_buffer));

    if (!doc) {
        fprintf(stderr, "Parse error: %s\n", error_buffer);
        return 1;
    }

    // Get top-level values
    const char* title = cconfig_get_string(doc, "title", "Default");
    int64_t port = cconfig_get_int(doc, "port", 9000);

    // Get nested values using dot notation
    const char* db_host = cconfig_get_string(doc, "database.host", "localhost");
    bool db_enabled = cconfig_get_bool(doc, "database.enabled", false);

    printf("Title: %s\n", title);
    printf("Port: %lld\n", (long long)port);
    printf("Database Host: %s\n", db_host);
    printf("Database Enabled: %s\n", db_enabled ? "true" : "false");

    // Clean up
    cconfig_free(doc);

    return 0;
}

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Whether it's bug reports, feature requests, or code contributions, all are appreciated.

Please read our Contributing Guidelines to get started. Also, be sure to review our Code of Conduct.

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