
A few weeks ago, the suggestion was made on Python-Dev that it might be time to consider replacing the ConfigParser module and that we should hold a "shootout" (ie ask for implementations and see what we get). Since then I've been playing around with this... not the parsing part (which so far I have completely ignored) but the programmer interface. There needs to be a well-thought-out data model for the information stored, and the user interface needs to be very easy to use, yet not so "magical" that it becomes difficult to understand. I have put together what I think is probably my best proposal. It is based on a superset of ini config files and java .property files. There is a convenient access mechanism ("config.my_app.some_value") as well as more general approaches ("config.values['my_app.serviceByPort.80']"). I have tried to consider issues like unicode (I permit fairly lenient mixing of unicode and str), and unit testing ("... call config.clear_all() in the tearDown() method of any unittests that use the config module..."). I have even considered carefully what to leave OUT (converting to non-string data types, interpolating values, things like that). I think that I am now at the point where I could really use some input from others. So I'd like to invite people to review my design and send me your suggestions. I'm not expecting this as a *useful* module yet (it doesn't yet parse files!), but it seemed like a good stage at which to ask for feedback. I'm attaching two files, config.py and configTest.py, and they are also available from these urls: http://www.mcherm.com/publish/2004-10-17/config.py http://www.mcherm.com/publish/2004-10-17/configTest.py Thanks in advance for reviewing this. -- Michael Chermside