Support for Map objects

[lviggiano]

sample property:

something.foo=1
something.bar=2
something.baz=3

sample class:

interface MyConfig extends Config {
    Map<String, Integer> something(); 
}

something() should return a map containing: foo=1, bar=2, baz=3

[chipu]

Another format could be:
something=key1:value1 key2:value2
defining then 2 types of separators (" " and ":")

[lviggiano]

@chipu that would be pretty easy (see this example). But I think it wouldn't be powerful as I wish: converting things to Map<String,String> would bring some advantage, but since OWNER has a rich set of converter I think that it should be possible to convert to Map<String,Anything> which sounds more convenient. We had some discussions here #52 .

Also I think that a Config object returning a Map<String, ?> could be better mapped to a Config object returning a nested Config object:

interface MyConfig extends Config {
  @DefaultValue("key1:value1 key2:value2")
  Map<String, String> map();
}

// would be equivalent, but more convenient, if expressed as:

interface MyMap extends Config {
  @DefaultValue("value1");
  String key1();

  @DefaultValue("value2");
  String key2();
}

interface MyConfig extends Config {
    MyMap map();
}

Basically a Config object can be seen as a map, where the method name is the key, and the returned value is the value. The advantage is that the compiler can check that the key is valid, and the return type matches, and IDE can also apply refactoring.

BTW I see the Map support feature related to the #2

Thanks for your feedback @chipu .