Revision 4 as of 2004-10-21 09:14:32

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There has been some recent debate about [http://python.org/doc/current/lib/module-ConfigParser.html ConfigParser] on the Python mailing lists. For more, see these threads:

This page serves as a place to record alternatives, and discuss (in a semi-permanent way) the features such a library might have. A new configuration parsing library could go into the Python standard library, probably in addition to the current ConfigParser module (perhaps with that module being deprecated).

Implementations

Please list interesting implementations of config parsers here.

Features

This is a list of features that should be taken into account. Certainly not all these features are required; maybe some aren't even desired.

Discussion

Discuss. Please sign your name.

What exactly is the goal? A new API to access configuration info? Or a specific file format itself? Or both? I don't have much problem with the current ConfigParser but ideally I would like use a 'simpler' API. This would allow attribute access (a.b.c) to values, provide default values, convert some types, and do some constraint checking (xyz is required) etc. It's very possible to get this functionality through a wrapper on top of ConfigParser. IMO that is the best approach, as long as there is a way to map the same API over a different underlying file format, such as XML. I think the 'dynamic nesting' point above is outside the scope of the config access API. -- Shalabh

Complexity killed the cat!

Look at what happened to urllib2 - the entry level for new users was greatly enhanced, but the added functionality was really little more than what you could already do more simply with urllib. With that in mind, I think if there is to be a config 'schema' then it should be provided as a subclass.

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