dotconf 0.1

Advanced configuration parser for Python

Dotconf is an advanced configuration parser which allow nested sections to any level, typed values in syntax, file include and so more. Dotconf is also shipped with a powerful schema validation system.

Features

• Configuration format kept as simple as possible.

• Developer friendly APIs.

• Types are expressed in the syntax, so the parser can guess it without validation.

• Four primitive types: string, number, boolean, or list.

• More complex composite types can be created using the schema validation system.

• Nested section of any deep. Sections can take a special “argument” value (look at the example).

• Schema validation system, all schema can be defined using declarative or imperative way.

• External file include with globbing.

• Tests (only parser is covered yet)

• Released under MIT license.

Example

This is an example of configuration file for an imaginary web server:

daemon = True
pidfile = '/var/run/myapp.pid'
interface = '0.0.0.0:80'
interface_ssl = '0.0.0.0:443'

host 'example.org' {
    path '/' {
        rate_limit = 30
    }
}

host 'protected.example.org' {
    enable_ssl = yes

    path '/files' {
        enable_auth = yes
        user 'foo' {
            password = 'bar'
        }
    }
}

You can access to each values using the developer friendly API:

>>> from dotconf import Dotconf
>>> parsed_conf = Dotconf.from_file('mywebserver.conf')
>>> print parsed_conf.get('daemon', False)
True

Even more exciting, you can create a validation schema to avoid you the painful chore of manual configuration file validation:

from dotconf.schema import many, once
from dotconf.schema.containers import Section, Value
from dotconf.schema.types import Boolean, Integer, Float, String

# Schema definition:

class UserSection(Section):
    password = Value(String())
    _meta = {'repeat': many, 'unique': True}

class PathSection(Section):
    rate_limit = Value(Float(), default=0)
    enable_auth = Value(Boolean(), default=False)
    user = UserSection()

class VirtualHostSection(Section):
    base_path = Value(String())
    enable_ssl = Value(Boolean(), default=False)
    path = PathSection()
    _meta = {'repeat': many, 'unique': True}

class MyWebserverConfiguration(Section):
    daemon = Value(Boolean()default=False)
    pidfile = Value(String(), default=None)
    interface = Value(String(), default='127.0.0.1:80')
    interface_ssl = Value(String(), default='127.0.0.1:443')
    host = VirtualHostSection()

Then you can use the API exactly as if it was not validated:

>>> from dotconf import Dotconf
>>> from myconfschema import MyWebserverConfiguration
>>> parsed_conf = Dotconf(conf, schema=MyWebserverConfiguration)
>>> print 'daemon:', parsed_conf.get('daemon')
daemon: True
>>> for vhost in parsed_conf.subsections('host'):
>>>     print vhost.args[0]
>>>     if vhost.get('enable_ssl'):
>>>         print '  SSL enabled'
>>>     for path in vhost.subsections('path'):
>>>         print '  ' + path.args[0]
>>>         if path.get('enable_auth'):
>>>             print '    Following users can access to this directory:'
>>>             for user in path.subsections('user'):
>>>                 print '     - ' + user.args[0]
>>>
example.org
  /
protected.example.org
  SSL enabled
  /files
    Following users can access to this directory:
      - foo

TODO

• Argparse integration (to allow user to override a config key with an argument).

• More test.

Changelog

v0.1 released on 24/03/2012

• Initial version.