GitRCFS - Git Remote Config Filesystem

What is GitRCFS?

GitRCFS offers a lightweight option to synchronize an application's configuration & data files with a remote git repository. This library provides a simple api to use a git repository to access readonly configuration files.

Why is this useful?

There are 2 main benefits to using remote git repositories for configuration file hosting.

1. GitRCFS enables configuration files to be synced across numerous different servers / devices. This saves the hassle of updating configuration files manually, and offers a single place to manage config files.
2. Another benefit is due to using Git as a version control, as a result, GitRCFS inherits all the benefits of Git. This way, config files could be shared across teams, rolled back, and be used in a much more flexible way.

Using GitRCFS

The GitRCFS library is extremely simple to use.

First create a FileRepository,

var repo = new FileRepository("https://github.com/encodeous/gitrcfstest",
    branch: "main", accessToken: "<your-token>", updateFrequencyMs: 5000);

You can optionally specify an access token, the branch to access the configuration files, and how frequently to check for configuration updates.

To access a file in the filesystem, there are 2 main ways:

1. Use the / operator to combine a path

   var configFile = repo / "config-dir" / "config.json";

2. Use the [] operator to select a path

   var configFile = repo["config-dir/config.json"];

All files and directories are of the type RcfsNode

Through this type, it is possible to listen for file changes, iterate the children of directories, and get the data from files.

Samples

Here are some code snippets showing the usage of GitRCFS.

Read data from repo

// simple use case to read data from a repo:
var repo = new FileRepository("https://github.com/encodeous/gitrcfstest");
Console.WriteLine($"File content from repo: \"{repo["folder/file-in-folder.txt"].GetStringData()}\"");

Reading serialized data from repo

// deserializing a file into a C# class
var repo = new FileRepository("https://github.com/encodeous/gitrcfstest");
Console.WriteLine($"Time is {repo["serialized.json"].DeserializeData<DateTime>()}");

Monitoring repo for changes

// monitor for changes
var repo = new FileRepository("https://github.com/encodeous/gitrcfstest");
var file = repo["folder/file-in-folder.txt"];
Console.WriteLine($"Initial file content from repo: \"{file.GetStringData()}\"");
// file changed event handler
file.ContentsChanged += (_,_) =>
{
    Console.WriteLine($"New file content: \"{file.GetStringData()}\"");
};

Authenticating

// simple use case to read data from a repo when logged in:
var repo = new FileRepository("https://github.com/encodeous/gitrcfstest", username: "user", password: "password");
Console.WriteLine($"File content from repo: \"{repo["folder/file-in-folder.txt"].GetStringData()}\"");