What's actually happening

Before we go on, I want to point out that what's happening here isn't magic.

The Viper library makes a Viper type, which itself is responsible for implementing all of the logic we've called so far.

That includes:

• setting our configfile name to config

• setting our extension to yaml

• setting the path to . or "my current directory"

• reading in the configuration file at the the above path

• getting values from the configuration file read from that path

But we didn't create any instances of Viper! That's because the viper library itself provides a "global" or "singleton" instance of the Viper struct (seen here) This is purely out of convenience to callers, and it allows developers to simply import the library, tell the library where the configuration file is, and be on their way writing business logic

If you wanted to create your own instance of a Viper struct, you can absolutely use the viper.New() function to instantiate one and use it standalone. For the purpose of this text, however, we'll use the singleton.

Now, back on topic!