Python: Create config files with configparser

Configparser is a simple, built-in way to start using config files in your Python scripts and programs.

Imagine our config.ini file looks like this:

[DEFAULT]
site_ranking = 5
site_speed = 5

[example_section]
url = yourawesome.site
port = 443
site_ranking = 10

Getting started is a simple as:

import configparser

config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read('config.ini')

Now we can access items much like we're using a dictionary, e.g. config['example_section']['url'] would return yourawesome.site. You can address one section directly (useful if you only have one section in the file):

>>> es = config['example_section']
>>> es['site_ranking']
10

The get method can also be used, which allows for fallback values: config.get('example_section', ‘not_port', fallback='9000') would return 9000.

The DEFAULT section provides values when keys do not exist in our example_section — even with a fallback value, the default value takes precedence:

>>> config.get('example_section', 'site_speed', fallback='10')
5

The return values will always be strings, unless methods like getint(), getfloat(), getboolean() are used. For booleans, values in the config file can be: 0, 1, no, yes, false, true.

Things to note:

Keys are not case sensitive, but values are
Values are assigned to keys with : or =
DEFAULT values have precedence over fallback values
Strings are returned by default for all values

Please let me know if you have some useful 'getting started' tips for Configparser!

#Python