Attributes may be 'generic' (untyped) or 'typed', and are stored in the order they are declared in the class statement. The value provided in the definition above is the 'default value'. Simple attributes may also be provided, but won't be type checked or kept in the original order. To read the ini file, just do this:
I think the syntax looks good, but as per a thread in python-list, you cannot discover the order of class variables by any solution (metaclass or otherwise), due to the fact that they become part of the class dictionary; which is arbitrarily unordered. If ordering is important to a user, one could have an optional __order__ attribute that gives the list of items in-order.
class WebServerIni(IniFile): class server(IniSection): socketPort = TypedAttribute(8080) threadPool = TypedAttribute(10) class staticContent(IniSection): bitmaps = TypedAttribute('c:/work/bitmaps') class session(IniSection): storageType = TypedAttribute('ram')
One nice thing about your solution is that one could pull out docstrings to provide per-section documentation in the INI file, though per-item docstrings (like WebServerIni.session.storageType) would be a bit more difficult. - Josiah