simplini 0.0.4

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
configparser	❌	🟢	✅	✅	✅
ConfigObj	✅	🔴	🐛	❌	❌
python-ini	❌	❓	❓	✅	❓
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.unnamed_section.set("app_name", "My App")
config.unnamed_section.set("version", "1.0.0")

# 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.unnamed_section["app_name"].value  # "My App"

Example config file output:

# Configuration for My App
# Created on 2025-09-28
app_name = "My App"
version = "1.0.0"

License

MIT License