On Sunday, August 2, 2015 at 12:14:51 PM UTC+2, Cecil Westerhof wrote:
> There are a lot of ways to store configuration information:
> - conf file
> - xml file
> - database
> - json file
> - and possible a lot of other ways
>
> I want to write a Python program to display cleaned log files. I do
> not think I need a lot of configuration to be stored:
> - some things relating to the GUI
> - default behaviour
> - default directory
> - log files to display, including some info
> - At least until where it was displayed
>
> Because of this I think a human readable file would be best.
> Personally I do not find XML very readable. So a conf or json file
> looks the most promising to me. And I would have a slight preference
> for a json file.
>
> Any comments, thoughts or tips?
>
> --
> Cecil Westerhof
> Senior Software Engineer
> LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/cecilwesterhof
Why not use Python files itself as configuration files?
I have done so several times and I am very pleased with
it. I have tried both INI and JSON, but in the end always
settled on using Python itself. If I have to share the
configuration information with other languages (like C++
or Javascript) I use JSON as the
For those who are interested, I provide a short summary
below on how I handle configuration files.
The scenario I want to support is that there is a hierarchical
set of configuration files (as typically found in Unix like
systems) that can be stored in a system wide folder (like
/etc/app), in a user folder (like /home/user/.config/app) and
in a local folder.
Each configuration file has a fixed name, not necessarily ending
in ".py". So for example, the name of the configuration file
is "config.myapp".
Next I start looking for the existence of these files and once
I find them I start merging all the configuration settings into
one Python dictionary. The function that I use can be found below.
(you need proper import statements, but this is standard Python).
def load_config(config_file, checked=False):
'''Small utility function to load external configuration files.
'''
if checked is False:
if not isfile(config_file) or islink(config_file):
msg = 'Config file "%s" does not exist.'
LOGGER.warning(msg)
return {}
# Load the module object; we use the imp.load_source function because
# the module configuration typically has a non-standard file extension
# (by default the file is called "config.myapp")
module_name = 'm%s' % str(uuid.uuid1()).replace('-', '')
# Prevent bytecode generation for configuration files
sys.dont_write_bytecode = True
config_module = imp.load_source(module_name, config_file)
# Continue with bytecode generation for other normal modules
sys.dont_write_bytecode = False
if not hasattr(config_module, '__config__'):
msg = 'Missing "__config__" attribute in configuration file.'
LOGGER.warning(msg)
return {}
else:
return config_module.__config__
--
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