Partitions / Sections / Namespaces

Parameters' sections (or partitions or namespaces, as you like) are contained in their names. HOCON uses a period (.) as path delimiter and this applies to parameter names as well. A section is defined as any part of the parameter name but the last (which is the parameter's actual name): section.subsection.name.

Sections can be specified at various stages / places:

• At class creation.

• As part of the parameter's name.

• In place of the parameter's name.

Class sections

Sections that apply to complete classes are declared as part of the class:

from hanna import Configurable, String

class Book(Configurable, path='book'):
    title = String()
    
Book.title.name  # "book.title"

The specified path can be any valid HOCON path expression (e.g. path='library.book' results in Book.title.name == 'library.book.title'). It is prepended to the name (or path) of all declared parameters.

By default the path completion feature only works inside class definitions. That is if you set a parameter on an existing class it won't have its name prefixed unless you install the corresponding add-on (see Parameter names).

Full name sections

We can specify a section as part of a parameter's name as for example:

class Book(Configurable):
    title = String('book.title')
    
Book.title.name  # "book.title"

This can also be combined with class sections:

class Book(Configurable, path='library'):
    title = String('book.title')

Book.title.name  # "library.book.title"

Prefix sections

Instead of specifying the full name of a parameter we can also only specify the parameter's section followed by a period and make use of the libraries feature to automatically derive the parameter name from the field name:

class Book(Configurable):
    title = String('book.')
    
Book.title.name  # "book.title"

Again this feature works together with class-wide sections:

class Book(Configurable, path='library'):
    title = String('book.')
    
Book.title.name  # "library.book.title"

By default the path completion feature only works inside class definitions. That is if you set a parameter on an existing class it won't have its name derived by autocomplete unless you install the corresponding add-on (see Parameter names).