The sole purpose of ConfigUpdater is to easily update an INI config file with no changes to the original file except the intended ones. This means comments, the ordering of sections and key/value-pairs as wells as their cases are kept as in the original file. Thus ConfigUpdater provides complementary functionality to Python's ConfigParser which is primarily meant for reading config files and writing new ones.
The key differences to ConfigParser are:
- minimal invasive changes in the update configuration file,
- proper handling of comments,
- only a single config file can be updated at a time,
- the original case of sections and keys are kept,
- control over the position of a new section/key
Following features are deliberately not implemented:
- interpolation of values,
- propagation of parameters from the default section,
- conversions of values,
- passing key/value-pairs with
default
argument, - non-strict mode allowing duplicate sections and keys.
First install the package with either:
pip install configupdater
or:
conda install -c conda-forge configupdater
Now we can simply do:
from configupdater import ConfigUpdater updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read("setup.cfg")
which would read the file setup.cfg
that is found in many projects.
To change the value of an existing key we can simply do:
updater["metadata"]["author"].value = "Alan Turing"
At any point we can print the current state of the configuration file with:
print(updater)
To update the read-in file just call updater.update_file()
or updater.write(open('filename','w'))
to write the changed configuration file to another destination. Before actually writing,
ConfigUpdater will automatically check that the updated configuration file is still valid by
parsing it with the help of ConfigParser.
Many of ConfigParser's methods still exists and it's best to look them up in the module reference. Let's look at some examples.
Let's say we have the following configuration in a string:
cfg = """ [metadata] author = Ada Lovelace summary = The Analytical Engine """
We can add an license option, i.e. a key/value pair, in the same way we would do with ConfigParser:
updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) updater["metadata"]["license"] = "MIT"
A simple print(updater)
will give show you that the new option was appended to the end:
[metadata] author = Ada Lovelace summary = The Analytical Engine license = MIT
Since the license is really important to us let's say we want to add it before the summary
and even add a short comment before it:
updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) (updater["metadata"]["summary"].add_before .comment("Ada would have loved MIT") .option("license", "MIT"))
which would result in:
[metadata] author = Ada Lovelace # Ada would have loved MIT license = MIT summary = Analytical Engine calculating the Bernoulli numbers
Using add_after
would give the same result and looks like:
updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) (updater["metadata"]["author"].add_after .comment("Ada would have loved MIT") .option("license", "MIT"))
Let's say we want to rename summary to the more common description:
updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) updater["metadata"]["summary"].key = "description"
If we wanted no summary at all, we could just do del updater["metadata"]["summary"]
.
Adding and remove sections just works like adding and removing options but on a higher level.
Sticking to our Ada Lovelace example, let's say we want to add a section options
just
before metadata
with a comment and two new lines to separate it from metadata
:
updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) (updater["metadata"].add_before .comment("Some specific project options") .section("options") .space(2))
As expected, this results in:
# Some specific project options [options] [metadata] author = Ada Lovelace summary = The Analytical Engine
We could now fill the new section with options like we learnt before. If we wanted to rename
an existing section we could do this with the help of the name
attribute:
updater["metadata"].name = "MetaData"
Sometimes it might be useful to inject a new section not in a programmatic way but more declarative. Let's assume we have thus defined our new section in a multi-line string:
sphinx_sect_str = """ [build_sphinx] source_dir = docs build_dir = docs/_build """
With the help of two ConfigUpdater objects we can easily inject this section into our example:
sphinx = ConfigUpdater() sphinx.read_string(sphinx_sect_str) sphinx_sect = sphinx["build_sphinx"] updater = ConfigUpdater() updater.read_string(cfg) (updater["metadata"].add_after .space() .section(sphinx_sect.detach()))
The detach
method will remove the build_sphinx
section from the first object
and add it to the second object. This results in:
[metadata] author = Ada Lovelace summary = The Analytical Engine [build_sphinx] source_dir = docs build_dir = docs/_build
Alternatively, if you want to preserve build_sphinx
in both
ConfigUpdater
objects (i.e., prevent it from being removed from the first
while still adding a copy to the second), you call also rely on stdlib's
copy.deepcopy
function instead of detach
:
from copy import deepcopy (updater["metadata"].add_after .space() .section(deepcopy(sphinx_sect)))
This technique can be used for all objects inside ConfigUpdater: sections, options, comments and blank spaces.
Shallow copies are discouraged in the context of ConfigUpdater because each configuration block keeps a reference to its container to allow easy document editing. When doing editions (such as adding or changing options and comments) based on a shallow copy, the results can be unreliable and unexpected.
For more examples on how the API of ConfigUpdater works it's best to take a look into the unit tests and read the references.
ConfigUpdater is mainly developed for PyScaffold.