Umwelt

Describe a configuration schema with dataclasses or pydantic and load values from the environment, in a static-typing-friendly way.

Examples

Flat

>>> os.environ["APP_HOSTS"] = '["b.org","sky.net"]'
>>> os.environ["APP_TOKEN"] = "very secret"

from typing import Sequence
from pydantic import SecretStr
import umwelt

class MyConfig:
    hosts: Sequence[str]
    token: SecretStr
    replicas: int = 2

config = umwelt.new(MyConfig, prefix="app")

>>> dataclasses.is_dataclass(config)
True
>>> config.hosts
["b.org", "sky.net"]
>>> config.token
SecretStr('**********')
>>> config.replicas
2

Nested

>>> os.environ["APP_DB_PORT"] = "32"

from __future__ import annotations  # for forward-references
from pydantic import UrlStr
import umwelt

class MyConfig:
    db: DbConfig
    host: UrlStr = "http://b.org"

@umwelt.subconfig
class DbConfig:
    port: int
    debug: bool = False

config = umwelt.new(MyConfig, prefix="app")

>>> config.host
"http://b.org"
>>> config.db.port
32

Install

$ pip install umwelt

Features

umwelt.new

umwelt.new expects one positional argument: the config class to fill. Umwelt will convert it into a dataclass if it's not one already.

umwelt.new also accepts named arguments:

• source (by default os.environ) is a Mapping[str, str] from which values are extracted.
• prefix can be a string or a callable. As a string, it is prepended to the config field's name. As a callable, it receives the config field's name and its result is the source key name.
• decoder is a callable expecting a type and a string, and returns a conversion of that string in that type, or in a type that pydantic can convert in that type. For example, when umwelt's default decoder is called with (List[Set[int]], "[[1]]"), it simply decodes the string from JSON and hence returns a list of lists, which pydantic properly converts into a list of sets.

@umwelt.subconfig

@umwelt.subconfig tags classes so that, when they appear as field annotations in another config class, umwelt.new doesn't instantiate them from a single source value, but rather from one source value per class field.

Example:

class Point:                              # no @subconfig
    def __init__(self, s: str):           # string input
        self.x, self.y = s.split(",", 1)  # arbitrary implementation

class MyConf:
    point: Point

conf = umwelt.new(MyConf, source={"POINT": "1,2"})  # one source entry
conf.point  # <Point at 0x7f07b1d04750>

conf.point is an instance of Point, built by passing the input value "1,2" directly to Point.__new__. There is only one source key: POINT.

Now compare with @umwelt.subconfig:

@umwelt.subconfig
class Point:
    x: int
    y: int

class MyConf:
    point: Point

conf = umwelt.new(MyConf, source={"POINT_X": "1", "POINT_Y": "2"})
conf.point  # Point(x=1, y=2)

conf.point is still an instance of Point (Point has been made a dataclass by Umwelt, hence the automatic __str__ implementation). There are two source keys: POINT_X and POINT_Y, each corresponding to a field of the Point class.

Comparison with Ecological

I've used Ecological for a long time. Today, a large part of Ecological's codebase implements features already found in dataclasses and pydantic, which are more mature. I believe Ecological's design can be dramatically simplified and improved by enforcing a strict separation of concerns:

• class scaffolding is the responsibility of dataclasses (which, compared to metaclasses, is simpler, more introspectable, and comes with helpers like asdict);
• type coercion and validation is the responsibility of pydantic (which has more features, e.g. nested data types, JSON Schema, serialization, etc.);
• mapping a pydantic schema (the configuration class) to a string-to-string dict (like os.environ) is the responsibility of Umwelt.

Some compatibility-breaking decisions prevent from doing this in Ecological:

• Don't autoload configuration values, especially not at class definition time. Instead, offer just one function (umwelt.new) that loads the configuration when it is called.
• Don't tie variable prefixes to configuration classes, as that doesn't play well with nested configurations.