Configly Python Library

The Python library for Configly: the modern config/static data key/value store.

Table of Contents

• What is Configly?
  • Core Features
  • Concepts/ Data Model
• Getting Started
  • 1. Get your API Key
  • 2. Create your first Config
  • 3. Install the client library
  • 4. Fetch the Config
• Usage
  • Feature Flags
• Configuring this library to use websockets
• License

• Configly Python Library

What is Configly?

Configly is the place software developers put their static / config data—like copy, styling, and minor configuration values. They can then update that data directly from https://www.config.ly without having to wait for a deploy process / app store review. Their app or webapp receives the data near instantly. Non-technical folks themselves can publish changes freeing developers to focus on hard software problems and not copy tweaks.

On the backend, Configly provides a read-optimized static-data key/value store built with the aim of being low-latency, and high-availability. The client libraries are made to be dead-simple, lean, and efficient (via enhancements like caching). There is a fancy web UI called the Configulator for setting and updating the configs as well as seeing things like change history. Configly is built for modern software development.

There are a host of other benefits to using Configly ( such as ensuring you do not have data duplicated across clients, reducing load on your primary DB, and better tolerance for traffic spikes), read more about the benefits at Configly.

Core Features

• API to fetch Strings, JSON Blobs (arrays and objects), Booleans, and Numbers from the Configly backend
• Web interface for modifying these values without having to deploy code (we call our beloved web interface the Configulator).
• High availability, high-throughput, low-latency backend.
• Smart caching on the client libraries to minimize server requests.
• Client libraries available in an expanding amount of languages.

Concepts/ Data Model

• A Configly account contains a set of Configs.
• A Config is a key-value pair along with associated metadata (like TTL).
• The keys are strings.
• The values are one of the following types:

Types

Type	notes	Example(s)
string		"I <3 Configly!"
number	Can be integers or decimal; be aware some clients require you to specify which when fetching	31337, 1.618
boolean	only true or false	true, false
jsonBlob	A JSON5 (more relaxed JSON) array or object.	["one", 5, true], {"text": "Buy now!", color: "#0F0"}

More jsonBlob examples

You can make arbitrarily complex JSON structures -- as long as the top level is an object or array. This is incredibly powerful as you can send a host of data with a single config:

A more complex array for a store inventory. Note that because we're using JSON5, quotes are optional for single words.

[
  "Simple T-shirt",
  "Basic hoodie",
  {
    item: "Complex T-shirt",
    sizes: ['S', 'M', 'L'],
    price_us_cents: [1099, 1499, 1599],
  }
]

And a more complex object showing how you can internationalize and set style:

{
  "welcome_message": {
    copy: {
      'en': 'Welcome!',
      'es': "¡Bienvenidos!",
    }, style: {
      color: '#0F0',
      fontWeight: '700',
    }
  },
  "buy_button" : {
    copy: {
      'en': 'Buy',
      'es': "Comprar",
    }, style: {
      backgroundColor: "#F00",
      border: "border-radius 10px",
    }
  }
}

Getting Started

In four easy steps!

1. Get your API Key

You'll need a Configly account. Registration is lightning quick—you can register via visiting https://www.config.ly/signup.

After signing up, you can grab your API Key from https://www.config.ly/register. You'll need your API Key to setup the API below.

2. Create your first Config

From https://www.config.ly/config, create a new Config via the "Add" button:

Consider creating a simple JSON Object or Array Config called greetings and give it the value of: ['hello', 'hola', '你好', 'नमस्ते']:

https://www.config.ly/config should look like this:

Be sure to save via clicking 'Send to Clients'. Now, we'll write client code to fetch this key.

3. Install the client library

If you're using Bundler (as is often the case with Rails), add the following line to your project's Gemfile:

gem 'configly-ruby', '~> 1.0.0'

Or, if you're using the Gem directly from your application, you can run:

gem install configly-ruby

You will need to set the CONFIGLY_API_KEY environment variable.

4. Fetch the Config

In a Rails controller, add the following code

def get
   begin
      key = Configly::Client.get(params[:key])
      render plain: key
   rescue Configly::KeyError
      render :status => 404
   end
end

Map the route, and then request it in your browser with the key params (e.g. http://localhost:3000/configly?key=test1234).

Try changing some values on https://www.config.ly/config to confirm that the client is getting the updates.

Congratulations you have Configly working end-to-end! Now, feel free to use Configly with all your projects!

Configuring this library to use websockets

Coming soon...

Usage

The golden rule of Configly library use is: do NOT assign the result of a get() to a long-lived variable; in order to check for new values from the server, you must call get().

The package needs to be configured with your account's API key, which is available in the Configly Configulator

// This value is stored on the Config.ly servers.
store_catalog:
{
   has_sale: true,
   discount: 0.8,
   items: ['T Shirt', 'Hoodie', 'Ferrari'],
   price: [ 100, 250,  200000],
}

On the Python client:

# You can try this example out by setting the `CONFIGLY_API_KEY` environmental variable to our demo account: 'Dem0apiKEY' 
begin
   catalog = Configly::Client.get("store_catalog")
   items = catalog['items']
   prices = catalog['prices']

   items.each_with_index do |item, index|
      Rails.logger.debug("#{item}: #{prices[index]} USD")
   end
rescue Configly::KeyError
   Rails.logger.error("Something went wrong")
end

Note: If the key doesn't exist, this will raise a Configly::KeyError

Feature Flags

Here is an example with feature flags.

// These values are stored on the Config.ly server

feature1_enabled: true
feature2_enabled: false

On the ruby client:

# Remember, you need to set the `CONFIGLY_API_KEY` environment variable. 
# You can find your API Key on https://www.config.ly/config.

begin
  if Configly::Client.get('feature1_enabled')
    # Logic for feature 1
  end

  if Configly::Client.get('feature2_enabled')
    # Logic for feature 2
  end
rescue Configly::KeyError
   Rails.logger.error("Something went wrong")
end

License

This repository is published under the MIT license.