.properties <-> .yml converter

[javahacks]

A command to automatically convert properties to YAML files (and vice versa) would be very handy.

[BoykoAlex]

Is this the request for Spring Boot Tools for vscode plugin?

[javahacks]

Yes just a simple command that can be triggered from within the editor or context menu:

[martinlippert]

Here is another related feature request to have yml -> properties convention: spring-attic/spring-ide#331.

It looks to me like we have three parts of this:

• convert properties -> yml
• convert yml -> properties
• make both available in Eclipse as well as VSCode

So this sounds to me like we should move the existing implementation for converting properties -> yml into the language server and make it available via a command to the client. Then, we could serve this as menu item / command in the various clients. Maybe the command can be generic in terms of which conversion should happen so that we can use the same command with different params for converting properties -> yml and then, down the line, for yml -> properties as well (so that the command is on the level of "convert" and the params specify the "to" format maybe. The input file would/could determine the "from" format.

[martinlippert]

Another thought here: If we allow the conversion to change the existing file (rename + content conversion), we would need to make sure that the conversion is exact and nothing gets lost in the conversion. This might be hard to achieve.

As a consequence, we could also always create a new file (in addition to the existing one) and put the converted content in the new file without deleting the existing file. That would prevent the user from loosing something in case the conversion is not fully complete or missed something.

We could also add a preference for this to switch between the modes ("delete file after property conversion") that would be disabled at the beginning and users could enable this if they think the old file should always be deleted.

[manueljordan]

Has a lot of sense what you are proposing.

In that way keeping the 2 files, the original and converted. Is assumed that in Spring Boot exists a priority about what file to choice if exists both with the same name but with different extension (.properties/.yml/.yaml). But it is other history and is assumed the developer knows what to do - either keep both files or delete the former when the latter was generated from the former (manually or automatically according with your propose).