Re: storing 'config sets' in gconf

[Cyrille Moureaux <Cyrille Moureaux Sun COM>]

Hi Venkat,

>  I know that gconf is primarily meant for storing
> preferences rather than appl config but still, is it
> possible to store sets of config. eg. consider an
> email appl which stores email account info in gconf.
> Is it possible to do this? I learnt from: 
> http://codeblogs.ximian.com/blogs/evolution/archives/2004_03.html
> (last item) that it is not possible. Could someone
> confirm this.
>  The issue as I see (to my limited knowledge of
> gconf) is that the gconf paths are predefined and
> cannot be dynamically created (at appl run time). We
> can only assign values to the pre-defined keys, right?
> If I have to create accounts and its parameters under
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts' (this will be defined in
> the appl's gconf schema), eg. 
>
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account1'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account1/smtpservername'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account1/smtpuserid'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account1/smtpuserpasswd'
>
> etc, and for another account it would be
>
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account2'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account2/smtpservername'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account2/smtpuserid'
> '/apps/myemailapp/accounts/account2/smtpuserpasswd'
>  
I don't see what would prevent you from doing that. The GConf schemas 
are not mandatory declarations, you can have keys without any schema 
association and you can create on the fly any key you want. An example 
of something very similar to what you describe with mail accounts can be 
seen in the panel applets and launchers list, which is located in GConf 
at /apps/panel/profiles/default, and where you have for instance the 
"objects" item which gets subkeys named "object_<n>" each time you add a 
launcher to your panel.

There are possibly other issues in maintaining account details in GConf, 
but I don't think the feasibility of storing arbitrary keys is one.

Cyrille