envflags

envflags

Description

envflags is for when you need to provide alternative environment variable settings for command line flags, a common requirement for configuration-based deployments. You can also use for switches that don't have command line options, to be consistent or to provide an easy shim to implement custom types for your command line flags.

Features:

• Back command line flags up wih environment variables and defaults
• Use any standard or custom type as a flag/config value
• Meant to work hand-in-hand with flag
• Built-in support for flag supported types with some useful extras like slog.Level control
• Easy to add support for custom types with a few lines of code
• Include environment variable names in usage
• No dependencies apart from go and the standard library

The priority logic is command line flag -> environment value -> default.

Quickstart

import "github.com/efixler/envflags"

var flags flag.FlagSet 

envflags.EnvPrefix = "MYAPP_"

portValue := envflags.NewInt("PORT", 8080)
flags.Var(portValue, "port", "The port to use")

logLevel := envflags.NewLogLevel("LOG_LEVEL", slog.LevelWarn)
flags.Var(logLevel, "log-level", "Set the log level [debug|error|info|warn]")

flags.Parse(os.Args[1:])

// .Get() returns the typed resolved value, an int in the first case
server.Port = portValue.Get()

var level slog.Level
// and here it's a slog.Level
level = logLevel.Get()

Adding Environment Variable Names to Usage

envflags provides a utility function that will add environment variable specs to usage entries, while also adding a flag to a flags.FlagSet.

Instead of calling flags.Var() as in the example above, do:

portValue.AddTo(&flags, "port", "The port to use")

The output of myapp -h will then include something like this:

  -port
      The port to use
      Environment: MYAPP_PORT (default 8080)

Custom Types

To map a flag/environment variable to a custom type you just need to:

1. Write a function to convert a string into your custom type
2. Write a function to instantiate the envflag.Value for that type

You can implement (1) as an anonymous function in the context of (2), as shown below.

type MyType struct {
    Prefix string
    Suffix string
}

func NewMyType(env string, defaultValue MyType) *envflags.Value[MyType] {
    converter := func(s string) (MyType, error) {
        value := MyType{}
        splits := strings.SplitAfterN(s, ":", 2)
        if len(splits) < 2 {
            return value, fmt.Errorf("invalid input %q", s)
        }
        value.Prefix = matches[0]
        value.Suffix = matches[1]
        return value
    }
    return envflags.NewEnvFlag(env, defaultValue, converter)
}

Implement fmt.Stringer on your custom type so it shows up properly when flags displays defaults.

You can also just use any applicable function value as pass it to the converter param of envflags.NewEnvFlag(env string, defaultValue T, converter func(string) (T, error)) directly. (T is a generic any).

The converter signature follows the general strconv-ish pattern. For example, the envflags.NewInt() function just wraps an invocation of NewEnvFlagValue(env, defaultValue, strconv.Atoi).

NewText can be used in conjunction with any type that supports encoding.TextUnmarshaler. If your type implements that interface, it's probably a better choice than implementing a converter.

Hints and Details

Pass a value of "" as the env to ignore the environment and just use command-line flags.

Using NewText

NewText maps to flag.TextVar and supports any type that implements encoding.TextUnmarshaler. As UnmarshalText is a pointer receiver, you'll need to pass a pointer (or a type that's a pointer type, like a slice) under the hood. (The passed TextUnmarshaler is never Unmarshaled to, but gopls doesn't like values here)

NewLogLevel supports slog.Level values directly without the minor inconvenience of referencing. It is possible to use NewText for this case as well, as log as a pointer is passed for defaultValue

Bugs and Suggestions?

Open an issue in this repo! Feedback welcome.