# Passing options to Bro plugins from a file **URL:** \ **Category:** Zeek\ **Created:** [August 9, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://community.zeek.org/t/passing-options-to-bro-plugins-from-a-file/3757 "2015-08-09T23:45:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gary\_Faulkner1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/aeb1de/32.png) [@Gary\_Faulkner1](https://community.zeek.org/u/Gary_Faulkner1)\ **Post date:** [August 9, 2015, 11:45pm UTC](https://community.zeek.org/t/passing-options-to-bro-plugins-from-a-file/3757/1 "2015-08-09T23:45:01Z")
I'd like to read options into a plugin such as IP addresses, hostnames, ports, etc from a configuration file. Looking at the redis plugin for inspiration, it looks like I could set types in the bif, set initial values in the plugin's init.bro and then redef in local.bro? Is this correct? Am I missing anything? For example I'd like to have a bro script that can call a function from scriptland to shove data into external DB. A use case may be something such as writing time series data directly to InfluxDB. Instead of hard coding the IP, port, etc into the plugin I'd like to be able to specify the location in a file. I might also use the file to define a tag structure for InfluxDB. ---
**Author:** ![robin](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/user_avatar/community.zeek.org/robin/32/599_2.png) [@robin](https://community.zeek.org/u/robin)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2015, 3:00pm UTC](https://community.zeek.org/t/passing-options-to-bro-plugins-from-a-file/3757/2 "2015-08-10T15:00:59Z")
Yes, correct. It's kind of the "normal" Bro way: you define a set of global options with defaults through the bifs and people can redef them as they need to. A few of the plugins do it this way, another example is dataseries/src/dataseries.bif. Robin ---
**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex011/uploads/zeek/original/1X/f09d732bc2cc7c7cc7e35db67cf4e1d5233ce7a7.png) [@system](https://community.zeek.org/u/system)\ **Post date:** [May 6, 2022, 3:42pm UTC](https://community.zeek.org/t/passing-options-to-bro-plugins-from-a-file/3757/3 "2022-05-06T15:42:57Z")