Refactor AzureAppConfiguration with new interfaces

[Eskibear]

Design

We support both two approaches to access key-values, maximize compatibility with customer's application code. For easier adoption of Azure App Configuration, and less code change.

AzureAppConfiguration {
  get<T>(key: string): T | undefined;  // preferred method, e.g. config.get("app.settings.color")
    constructConfigurationObject(options);    // helper function to construct hierarchical object, compatible with chained dot notation, e.g. config.app.settings.color
}

Edge case (for using configuration object only):

Hierarchical key-value pairs with overlapped key prefix:
  key: "app3.settings" => value: "placeholder"
  key: "app3.settings.fontColor" => value: "yellow"

How to re-construct data object from key-values?
config.app3.settings = ? 

In this case, constructConfigurationObject() throws an error.

Mitigation approach

Add an option skipObjectValidataion: boolean, default to false.
- true. Throw an error when constructing the data object., because of ambiguity.
- false. Skip the validation, allow information lost in data object, as the preferred get() method can always have the expected results.
(propose to use constructConfigurationObject(options) as below, which would not affect the original load() call)

[Eskibear]

Offline synced with Zhenlan, two improvements

• AppConfig impl Map interfaces, and throw exception in set(k, v) to enforce immutability.

• Change data object to a helper function, e.g constructConfigurationObject(options), which constructs an object using KVs from the configMap. The options can include:

  • customized separator, if necessary. default is . but might be : if the config is shared with other languages.
  • - how to deal with ambiguity mentioned in above edge case, silently continue or throw exception.
  • - customized prefix, default to empty string, meaning to convert the whole map. It's useful if a only configuration section is wanted.

Updates from design review:

• Remove prefix as we can get subset from the root object if necessary, the performance overhead is expected to be little.
• The "behavior" should be always throwing error. Because silent fail doesn't ensure expected results. Customers should fix error in AppConfig store to get their app back to run.

[rossgrambo]

AppConfig impl Map interfaces

I don't think there is a Map interface. Javascript added Map, and Javascript doesn't have interfaces. Looks like Typescript didn't add an interface for it as far as I can tell.

Nvm- zhiyuan found it

[zhiyuanliang-ms]

For the edge case:

Edge case (for data property only):
Hierarchical key-value pairs with overlapped key prefix:
key: "app3.settings" => value: "placeholder"
key: "app3.settings.fontColor" => value: "yellow"

How to re-construct data object from key-values?
config.data.app3.settings = ?

Since the default shape is map and user needs to call constructDataObject(options) to use data object, is this a valid case?
If the user sets two key "app3.settings" and "app3.settings.fontColor", will he really use the data object instead of map to get configuration?

If the user wants to use data object, he should set the value as json shape and set the content type as json.

[zhiyuanliang-ms]

@rossgrambo There is Map interface in TypeScript.

My question is why to use a custom IGettable interface and throw exception when set is called. Currently, we are using ReadOnlyMap interface, this makes more sense to me.

Now I see the reason why we implement a custom IGettable as Get<T> will convert the value to the T type.

[Eskibear]

As the design is finalized, this PR is ready for review now. Please take a look.