What s the best practice using a settings file in Python

Question

I have a command line script that I run with a lot of arguments  I have now come to a point where I have too many arguments  and I want to have some arguments in dictionary form too   So in order to simplify things I would like to run the script with a settings file instead  I don t really know what libraries to use for the parsing of the file  What s the best practice for doing this  I could of course hammer something out myself  but if there is some library for this  I m all ears   A few  demands     Rather than using pickle I would like it to be a straight forward text file that can easily be read and edited  I want to be able to add dictionary-like data in it  i e   some form of nesting should be supported    A simplified pseudo example file   truck      color  blue     brand  ford city  new york cabriolet      color  black     engine          cylinders  8         placement  mid     doors  2

User · Answer

The sample config you provided is actually valid YAML. In fact, YAML meets all of your demands, is implemented in a large number of languages, and is extremely human friendly. I would highly recommend you use it. The PyYAML project provides a nice python module, that implements YAML.

To use the yaml module is extremely simple:

import yaml
config = yaml.safe_load(open("path/to/config.yml"))

User · Answer

Yaml and Json are the simplest and most commonly used file formats to store settings config  PyYaml can be used to parse yaml  Json is already part of python from 2 5  Yaml is a superset of Json  Json will solve most uses cases except multi line strings where escaping is required  Yaml takes care of these cases too    gt  gt  gt  import json  gt  gt  gt  config     handler     adminhandler py    timeoutsec    5    gt  gt  gt  json dump config  open   tmp config json    w     gt  gt  gt  json load open   tmp config json        u handler   u adminhandler py   u timeoutsec   5

User · Answer

You can have a regular Python module  say config py  like this  truck   dict      color    blue       brand    ford     city    new york  cabriolet   dict      color    black       engine   dict          cylinders   8          placement    mid              doors   2     and use it like this  import config print config truck  color

User · Answer

I Found this the most useful and easy to use https   wiki python org moin ConfigParserExamples  You just create a  myfile ini  like    SectionOne  Status  Single Name  Derek Value  Yes Age  30 Single  True   SectionTwo  FavoriteColor Green  SectionThree  FamilyName  Johnson   Others  Route  66   And retrieve the data like    gt  gt  gt  import ConfigParser  gt  gt  gt  Config   ConfigParser ConfigParser    gt  gt  gt  Config  lt ConfigParser ConfigParser instance at 0x00BA9B20 gt   gt  gt  gt  Config read  myfile ini     c   tomorrow ini    gt  gt  gt  Config sections     Others    SectionThree    SectionOne    SectionTwo    gt  gt  gt  Config options  SectionOne     Status    Name    Value    Age    Single    gt  gt  gt  Config get  SectionOne    Status    Single

[python] What's the best practice using a settings file in Python?

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