Configs in Python made smooth and simple

env-better is a betterconf fork (better config) is a Python library for project configuration management. It allows you define your config like a regular Python class.

Features:

• Easy to hack.
• Less boilerplate.
• Minimal code to do big things.
• Zero dependencies. Only vanilla Python >=3.11

env-better is heavily typed, so your editors and typecheckers will be happy with it.

It's not that huge as Pydantic, so takes like 5 minutes to dive into.

env-better is highly customizable, so you can do anything with it.

Installation

I recommend you to use poetry:

poetry add env-better

However, you can use pip:

pip install env-better

How to?

env-better is very intuitive, so you don't need special knowledge to use it. We'll cover the basics.

The most simple config will look like this:

from betterconf import betterconf

@betterconf
class Config:
    LOGIN: str
    PASSWORD: str

cfg = Config()
print(config.LOGIN)

Let's dive into what it does. By default, env-better uses EnvironmentProvider, getting values with os.getenv, so you can run this example with LOGIN=vasya PASSWORD=admin python config.py and simply get your login.

There is a very usable thing in our fancy-web-world, called .envs. env-better automatically supports them out-of-the-box! See it:

from betterconf import betterconf, DotenvProvider

# here betterconf gets values from `.env` file, you can change name or the path passing it as the first
# argument to provider.
# also, auto_load lets you not to write `provider.load_into_env` (loading variables to os.environ)
# or `provider.load_into_provider()` (loading them into the provider's inner storage).
@betterconf(provider=DotenvProvider(auto_load=True))
class Config:
    val1: int
    val2: str
    name: str

cfg = Config()
print(cfg.val1, cfg.val2, cfg.name)

Your .env then looks like this:

name="John Wicked"
val1=12
val2="testing value"

But what if you need a different provider? env-better lets you set providers as for config itself and for each field respectively.

import json
from betterconf import Alias
from betterconf import betterconf, field
from betterconf import JSONProvider, AbstractProvider

sample_json_config = json.dumps({"field": {"from": {"json": 123}}})

# our provider, that just gives the name of field back
class NameProvider(AbstractProvider):
    def get(self, name: str) -> str:
        return name

@betterconf(provider=NameProvider())
class Config:
    # value will be got from NameProvider and will simply be `my_fancy_name`
    my_fancy_name: str
    # here we get value from JSONProvider; the default nested_access is '.'
    field_from_json: Alias[int, "field::from::json"] = field(provider=JSONProvider(sample_json_config, nested_access="::"))

env-better casts primitive types itself, they include list, float, str, int. But if you need specific caster, say for complex object, you can write your own.

from betterconf import betterconf
from betterconf import AbstractCaster, field

class DashesToDotsCaster(AbstractCaster):
    def cast(self, val: str) -> str:
        return val.replace("_", ".")

@betterconf
class Config:
    simple_int: int
    value: str = field(caster=DashesToDotsCaster())

print(Config(value="privet_mir", simple_int="55666").value)