Sync JSON config file with command line options

[whymarrh]

Idea: adding the ability to configure all the same options in the JSON config (.pa11yrc) that are available as command line flags.

I'm not 100% sure where I would draw the line on this as not all of the command line flags are worthy (e.g. help and version), but I think the others might be useful.

Thoughts? With ideas like #50/#51 and #53, maybe the JSON config is underutilised.

[whymarrh]

I am willing to submit a PR.

[rowanmanning]

Yes, I think this is a great idea, and would be more than willing to merge in. As to which command-line args we allow, do you think a flat list somewhere would make sense? Just to prevent use of help etc? The only downside with that is that we'd have to add new flags by name as Phantom adds them.

[whymarrh]

I'm not sure I understand the questions fully, so please forgive me if I'm talking about something seemingly random.

The command line flags for pa11y can be listed out via --help and in the README file. These options can be added/removed as their command line counterparts change. What I'm thinking is that, when using the API:

var pa11y = require('pa11y');
pa11y.sniff(options, callback);

One should be able to save something resembling options to a JSON file and pass it to:

pa11y --config $filename $site

For PhantomJS arguments, I think there may be two ways to pass the options dynamically (to avoid having to keep the supported options up to date):

1. Write out a temp JSON config file and pass just one argument:

   --config=/tmp/config.json
   

2. Since "[the PhantomJS config file] keys are de-dashed, camel-cased equivalents of the other supported command-line options", we could just reverse that process, prepend --, and pass the arguments along.

   Something like so:

   "localStorageQuota".replace(/([a-z])([A-Z])/g, function (match, p1, p2) {
       return g + "-" + e.toLowerCase();
   });
   // "local-storage-quota"
   

I'm not sure if either of the above are particularly elegant, but they might work.

[whymarrh]

The last snippet in my comment above should actually read:

"localStorageQuota".replace(/([a-z])([A-Z])/g, function (match, p1, p2) {
    return p1 + "-" + p2.toLowerCase();
});

[whymarrh]

Any new thoughts on what's above?

[rowanmanning]

Hi @whymarrh, sorry – this has been marked as unread, I've had no free time to work on pa11y and I've let the issues get ahead of me! Based on your longer reply, I think I was getting the wrong end of the stick before, and this would definitely be really useful.

Is it something you're keen to work on?

[whymarrh]

@rowanmanning no worries!

I'm definitely still willing to submit a PR for this.

[rowanmanning]

Just a note, this has made it into a development version of pa11y, support for configuring any PhantomJS flag (not necessarily through a config file, but it works anyway). There's no ETA yet but I'll keep you posted.

[rowanmanning]

@whymarrh can this issue close based on the new 2.0 API (where you can configure everything from the JSON config if you need to)?

[whymarrh]

Sure can!