Most Pythonic way to provide global configuration variables in config py

Question

In my endless quest in over-complicating simple stuff  I am researching the most  Pythonic  way to provide global configuration variables inside the typical  config py  found in Python egg packages    The traditional way  aah  good ol   define   is as follows   MYSQL PORT   3306 MYSQL DATABASE    mydb  MYSQL DATABASE TABLES     tb users    tb groups     Therefore global variables are imported in one of the following ways   from config import   dbname   MYSQL DATABASE for table in MYSQL DATABASE TABLES      print table   or   import config dbname   config MYSQL DATABASE assert isinstance config MYSQL PORT  int     It makes sense  but sometimes can be a little messy  especially when you re trying to remember the names of certain variables  Besides  providing a  configuration  object  with variables as attributes  might be more flexible  So  taking a lead from bpython config py file  I came up with   class Struct object        def   init   self   args           self   header     str args 0   if args else None      def   repr   self           if self   header   is None               return super Struct  self    repr             return self   header        def next self               Fake iteration functionality                      raise StopIteration      def   iter   self               Fake iteration functionality          We skip magic attribues and Structs  and return the rest                      ks   self   dict   keys           for k in ks              if not k startswith       and not isinstance k  Struct                   yield getattr self  k       def   len   self               Don t count magic attributes or Structs                      ks   self   dict   keys           return len  k for k in ks if not k startswith                            and not isinstance k  Struct      and a  config py  that imports the class and reads as follows   from  config import Struct as Section  mysql   Section  MySQL specific configuration   mysql user    root  mysql pass    secret  mysql host    localhost  mysql port   3306 mysql database    mydb   mysql tables   Section  Tables for  mydb    mysql tables users    tb users  mysql tables groups     tb groups    and is used in this way   from sqlalchemy import MetaData  Table import config as CONFIG  assert isinstance CONFIG mysql port  int    mdata   MetaData       mysql    s  s  s  d  s               CONFIG mysql user           CONFIG mysql pass           CONFIG mysql host           CONFIG mysql port           CONFIG mysql database            tables      for name in CONFIG mysql tables      tables append Table name  mdata  autoload True     Which seems a more readable  expressive and flexible way of storing and fetching global variables inside a package   Lamest idea ever  What is the best practice for coping with these situations  What is your way of storing and fetching global names and variables inside your package

User · Answer

How about just using the built-in types like this:

config = {
    "mysql": {
        "user": "root",
        "pass": "secret",
        "tables": {
            "users": "tb_users"
        }
        # etc
    }
}

You'd access the values as follows:

config["mysql"]["tables"]["users"]

If you are willing to sacrifice the potential to compute expressions inside your config tree, you could use YAML and end up with a more readable config file like this:

mysql:
  - user: root
  - pass: secret
  - tables:
    - users: tb_users

and use a library like PyYAML to conventiently parse and access the config file

Most Pythonic way to provide global configuration variables in config.py?

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