root / PyCon07 / material / recipe_10.txt

How to use ConfigParser
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How to use ConfigParser
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:abstract:

    ConfigParser provides a high level access to ini files.
    This recipe will show you how it can be used to provide
    a programm a simple configuration access

First of all, let's create a configuration file::

    >>> config = """\
    ... [webpages]
    ... python=http://python.org
    ... pycon=http://us.pycon.org
    ...
    ... [options]
    ... path=/tmp
    ... words=cool,fun,neat
    ... """
    >>> import os
    >>> filename = os.path.join('/tmp', 'conf.ini')
    >>> f = open(filename, 'w')
    >>> f.write(config)
    >>> f.close()

The content is then readable by a ConfigParser instance::

    >>> from ConfigParser import ConfigParser
    >>> config = ConfigParser()
    >>> read = config.read([filename])
    
We can then read the sections of the file with the `options` methods::

    >>> res = config.items('options')
    >>> res.sort()
    >>> res
    [('path', '/tmp'), ('words', 'cool,fun,neat')]