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Ask HN: How do you build settings menus in your app?

2•michaelfromsyd•7h ago
Does anyone else find building settings menus tedious? Whatever I'm building, it always feels like I need one.

Does anyone use any tools or patterns to manage settings efficiently?

Comments

PaulHoule•6h ago
It seems like the kind of thing you could "low code" in the sense that you write a schema and the settings UI is automatically generated.

I don't know what you're programming in but you should have some table in your app that has

  * the name of the setting
  * the type of user interface control to use
  * how to get the settings data out of the app and format it for the UI control
  * how to set the settings data out of the UI control and apply it the system
  * other metadata to set the order, put the setting on the right screen,
    make them searchable, whatever
It is possible that the getters and setters are closures, or object references, method references, or a path of some kind (like the name of something in an .ini file or "property1.subproperty5") depending on the facilities used in your language. It's not crazy to keep settings in something like a sqlite database. Similarly the UI control could be specified by name or you could have a function that creates it.
michaelfromsyd•6h ago
Yep — that’s a project I’ve been working on: define a schema, get a UI + SDK to manage settings.

Planning to share it soon — mostly just trying to get a sense of what others are using and if this would be helpful. Appreciate the reply!

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