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Advanced Set-Up Options

Using an .env File

The advanced set-up options are configured through an .env file. This file should lie in the directory where you run your code from.

If you already have an .env file you can add the new variables to the existing file.

Please note that if a parameter is omitted it has the same meaning as setting it to false.

Oftentimes, .env files are used to store sensitive parameters, such as passwords. Therefore, it is best practice to add it to your .gitignore file if it is not already.

Save Warnings Output to CSV

User information, warnings and errors are printed out on the command line. It is possible to save them into a CSV file instead. To do so, set XMLLIB_WARNINGS_CSV_SAVEPATH to the path of the CSV file.

Example .env file content:

XMLLIB_WARNINGS_CSV_SAVEPATH="my_folder/my_file.csv"

Warnings will no longer be printed out on the terminal, but you will get a print notification when writing the XML if any problems were encountered. If a CSV file from a previous run already exists, it is overwritten. If you wish to keep the old file, you must move or rename it.

Configure Warnings Level

During the runtime of the xmllib, there are three possible levels of user information that may be printed out or saved as csv, namely info, warning and error.

  • Info:
    • The input may be incorrect in some cases
    • For example, the list you provided does not contain any elements
    • Set the variable XMLLIB_IGNORE_USER_INFO to ignore this
  • Warnings:
    • The input is wrong, but the XML can be created
    • For example, a value which is expected to be a boolean could not be converted into a boolean
    • Set the variable XMLLIB_IGNORE_USER_WARNING to ignore this
  • Errors:
    • The input is so wrong, that the code cannot be executed
    • Cannot be ignored

If both info and warnings should be ignored, you need to set both variables to true.

Example .env file content:

XMLLIB_IGNORE_USER_INFO=true
XMLLIB_IGNORE_USER_WARNING=true

Configurations for the Resulting XML File

Sorting of Resources and Values in the XML

By default, resources and values are not sorted when creating the XML. You can configure sorting through the following .env variables.

  • XMLLIB_SORT_RESOURCES: sort resources by resource id
  • XMLLIB_SORT_PROPERTIES: sort properties by the property name, and the values within the properties

Example .env file content:

XMLLIB_SORT_RESOURCES=true
XMLLIB_SORT_PROPERTIES=true

If you want to enable only one of these sortings, the other can either be omitted or set to false.

Note on the sorting order:

  • The order is determined by the character number in the Unicode chart.
  • This means that for example: B will come before a, as capital letters have a lower number than lower case letters.
  • Numbers are treated as strings. This means that for example 01 and 1 are treated differently.

Authorship Reference IDs

By default, authorship IDs are generated using a UUID. If the references should be consistent across all runs, then this .env variable can be set. When this variable is set, the authorships are sorted alphabetically and the IDs will start at 1.

Example .env file content:

XMLLIB_AUTHORSHIP_ID_WITH_INTEGERS=true