simplini 0.0.20

A simple INI file parser/writer

A simple INI file parser and writer for Python that works.

Installation

pip install simplini

Why?

The reasons this library was created:

• Standard library configparser does not support round trip editing (comments will not be written back), see https://docs.python.org/3/library/configparser.html
• Alternatives like https://github.com/DiffSK/configobj have a lot of bugs and are not actively maintained

Comparison

Library	Round-trip editing	Maintenance	Correctness	Configurability	Multi-line values	Error reporting
configparser	❌	🟢	✅	✅	✅	🙂
ConfigObj	✅	🔴	🐛	❌	❌	🤔
python-ini	❌	❓	❓	✅	❓	🙁
ini-parser	✅	❓	🐛	❌	❌	🙁
simplini	✅	🟢	✅	✅	✅	🥰

Features

• Simple API
• Round-trip editing preserving comments
• Non-ambiguous strings encoding
• Configurable parsing and rendering behavior
• No surprises like sudden interpolation or lower-casing option names

Usage

Basic usage example:

from simplini import IniConfig

# Create a new INI config
config = IniConfig()

# Add values to the default section
config.set("app_name", "My App")
config.set("version", "1.0.0")

# set values for some named section
config.set("db", "sql", section_name="core")

# Add a comment to the default section
config.unnamed_section.comment = [
    "Configuration for My App",
    "Created on 2025-09-28",
]

# Save to file
config.save("config.ini")

# Load from file
loaded_config = IniConfig.load("config.ini")
app_name = loaded_config.get("app_name")  # My App
core_db = loaded_config.get("db", section_name="core")  # sql

Example config file output:

# Configuration for My App
# Created on 2025-09-28

app_name = "My App"

version = "1.0.0"

[core]

db = "sql"

License

MIT License