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author | Vsevolod Stakhov <vsevolod@highsecure.ru> | 2014-01-05 01:16:47 +0000 |
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committer | Vsevolod Stakhov <vsevolod@highsecure.ru> | 2014-01-05 01:16:47 +0000 |
commit | 54f5a8037d09da9c129a7941a6bc0c80f6107b35 (patch) | |
tree | d45305b825cc3937f89d59c10d67e70d8d8b2bb9 /doc | |
parent | fd2876663a02aadf25e12ed45405f3b40c0d8c50 (diff) | |
download | rspamd-54f5a8037d09da9c129a7941a6bc0c80f6107b35.tar.gz rspamd-54f5a8037d09da9c129a7941a6bc0c80f6107b35.zip |
Add UCL language documentation.
Diffstat (limited to 'doc')
-rw-r--r-- | doc/markdown/configuration/ucl.md | 296 |
1 files changed, 296 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/doc/markdown/configuration/ucl.md b/doc/markdown/configuration/ucl.md new file mode 100644 index 000000000..15fda9369 --- /dev/null +++ b/doc/markdown/configuration/ucl.md @@ -0,0 +1,296 @@ +## Introduction + +This document describes the main features and principles of the configuration +language called `UCL` - universal configuration language. + +## Basic structure + +UCL is heavily infused by `nginx` configuration as the example of a convenient configuration +system. However, UCL is fully compatible with `JSON` format and is able to parse json files. +For example, you can write the same configuration in the following ways: + +* in nginx like: + +```nginx +param = value; +section { + param = value; + param1 = value1; + flag = true; + number = 10k; + time = 0.2s; + string = "something"; + subsection { + host = { + host = "hostname"; + port = 900; + } + host = { + host = "hostname"; + port = 901; + } + } +} +``` + +* or in JSON: + +```json +{ + "param": "value", + "param1": "value1", + "flag": true, + "subsection": { + "host": [ + { + "host": "hostname", + "port": 900 + }, + { + "host": "hostname", + "port": 901 + } + ] + } +} +``` + +## Improvements to the json notation. + +There are various things that make ucl configuration more convenient for editing than strict json: + +### General syntax sugar + +* Braces are not necessary to enclose a top object: it is automatically treated as an object: + +```json +"key": "value" +``` +is equal to: +```json +{"key": "value"} +``` + +* There is no requirement of quotes for strings and keys, moreover, `:` may be replaced `=` or even be skipped for objects: + +```nginx +key = value; +section { + key = value; +} +``` +is equal to: +```json +{ + "key": "value", + "section": { + "key": "value" + } +} +``` + +* No commas mess: you can safely place a comma or semicolon for the last element in an array or an object: + +```json +{ + "key1": "value", + "key2": "value", +} +``` +### Automatic arrays creation + +* Non-unique keys in an object are allowed and are automatically converted to the arrays internally: + +```json +{ + "key": "value1", + "key": "value2" +} +``` +is converted to: +```json +{ + "key": ["value1", "value2"] +} +``` + +### Named keys hierarchy + +UCL accepts named keys and organize them into objects hierarchy internally. Here is an example of this process: +```nginx +section "blah" { + key = value; +} +section foo { + key = value; +} +``` + +is converted to the following object: + +```nginx +section { + blah { + key = value; + } + foo { + key = value; + } +} +``` + +Plain definitions may be more complex and contain more than a single level of nested objects: + +```nginx +section "blah" "foo" { + key = value; +} +``` + +is presented as: + +```nginx +section { + blah { + foo { + key = value; + } + } +} +``` + +### Convenient numbers and booleans + +* Numbers can have suffixes to specify standard multipliers: + + `[kKmMgG]` - standard 10 base multipliers (so `1k` is translated to 1000) + + `[kKmMgG]b` - 2 power multipliers (so `1kb` is translated to 1024) + + `[s|min|d|w|y]` - time multipliers, all time values are translated to float number of seconds, for example `10min` is translated to 600.0 and `10ms` is translated to 0.01 +* Booleans can be specified as `true` or `yes` or `on` and `false` or `no` or `off`. +* It is still possible to treat numbers and booleans as strings by enclosing them in double quotes. + +## General improvements + +### Commments + +UCL supports different style of comments: + +* single line: `#` +* multiline: `/* ... */` + +Multiline comments may be nested: +```c +# Sample single line comment +/* + some comment + /* nested comment */ + end of comment +*/ +``` + +### Macros support + +UCL supports external macros both multiline and single line ones: +```nginx +.macro "sometext"; +.macro { + Some long text + .... +}; +``` +There are two internal macros provided by UCL: + +* `include` - read a file `/path/to/file` or an url `http://example.com/file` and include it to the current place of +UCL configuration; +* `includes` - read a file or an url like the previous macro, but fetch and check the signature file (which is obtained +by `.sig` suffix appending). + +Public keys which are used for the last command are specified by the concrete UCL user. + +### Variables support + +UCL supports variables in input. Variables are registered by a user of the UCL parser and can be presented in the following forms: + +* `${VARIABLE}` +* `$VARIABLE` + +UCL currently does not support nested variables. To escape variables one could use double dollar signs: + +* `$${VARIABLE}` is converted to `${VARIABLE}` +* `$$VARIABLE` is converted to `$VARIABLE` + +However, if no valid variables are found in a string, no expansion will be performed (and `$$` thus remains unchanged). This may be a subject +to change in future libucl releases. + +### Multiline strings + +UCL can handle multiline strings as well as single line ones. It uses shell/perl like notation for such objects: +``` +key = <<EOD +some text +splitted to +lines +EOD +``` + +In this example `key` will be interpreted as the following string: `some text\nsplitted to\nlines`. +Here are some rules for this syntax: + +* Multiline terminator must start just after `<<` symbols and it must consist of capital letters only (e.g. `<<eof` or `<< EOF` won't work); +* Terminator must end with a single newline character (and no spaces are allowed between terminator and newline character); +* To finish multiline string you need to include a terminator string just after newline and followed by a newline (no spaces or other characters are allowed as well); +* The initial and the final newlines are not inserted to the resulting string, but you can still specify newlines at the begin and at the end of a value, for example: + +``` +key <<EOD + +some +text + +EOD +``` + +## Emitter + +Each UCL object can be serialized to one of the three supported formats: + +* `JSON` - canonic json notation (with spaces indented structure); +* `Compacted JSON` - compact json notation (without spaces or newlines); +* `Configuration` - nginx like notation; +* `YAML` - yaml inlined notation. + +## Performance + +Are UCL parser and emitter fast enough? Well, there are some numbers. +I got a 19Mb file that consist of ~700 thousands lines of json (obtained via +http://www.json-generator.com/). Then I checked jansson library that performs json +parsing and emitting and compared it with UCL. Here are results: + +``` +jansson: parsed json in 1.3899 seconds +jansson: emitted object in 0.2609 seconds + +ucl: parsed input in 0.6649 seconds +ucl: emitted config in 0.2423 seconds +ucl: emitted json in 0.2329 seconds +ucl: emitted compact json in 0.1811 seconds +ucl: emitted yaml in 0.2489 seconds +``` + +So far, UCL seems to be significantly faster than jansson on parsing and slightly faster on emitting. Moreover, +UCL compiled with optimizations (-O3) performs significantly faster: +``` +ucl: parsed input in 0.3002 seconds +ucl: emitted config in 0.1174 seconds +ucl: emitted json in 0.1174 seconds +ucl: emitted compact json in 0.0991 seconds +ucl: emitted yaml in 0.1354 seconds +``` + +You can do your own benchmarks by running `make test` in libucl top directory. + +## Conclusion + +UCL has clear design that should be very convenient for reading and writing. At the same time it is compatible with +JSON language and therefore can be used as a simple JSON parser. Macroes logic provides an ability to extend configuration +language (for example by including some lua code) and comments allows to disable or enable the parts of a configuration +quickly. |