Reading multiline values using ConfigParser

[Phoe6]

On Jun 21, 7:34 pm, "John Krukoff" <jkruk... at ltgc.com> wrote:
> > > > Is there anyway, I can include multi-line value in the configfile? I
>
> > > Following the link to RFC 822 (http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc822.html)
> > > indicates that you can spread values out over multiple lines as long as
> > > there is a space or tab character imeediately after the CRLF.
>
> > Thanks for the response. It did work!
>
> > >>> config = ConfigParser()
> > >>> config.read("Testcases.txt")
> > ['Testcases.txt']
> > >>> output = config.get("Information", "Testcases")
> > >>> print output
>
> > tct123
> > tct124
> > tct125
> > >>> output
> > '\ntct123\ntct124\ntct125'
>
> > However, as I am going to provide Testcases.txt to be "user editable",
> > I cannot assume or "ask users" to provide value testcases surronded by
> > spaces. I got to figure out a workaround here.
>
> Sounds like you're stuck modifying ConfigParser to do what you want, or
> writing your own configuration file parsing utilities.
>
> >From looking through the ConfigParser source, looks like all the parsing
>
> work is inside the _read method, so shouldn't be too painful to make a
> subclass that does what you want.
>

I took the approach of Subclassing ConfigParser to support multiline
values without leading white-spaces, but am struct at which position
in _read I should modify to accomodate the non-leading whitespace
based multiline values.

I can guess, this portion in the _read function will require change,
any change to this affects the whole of parsing. :-(  Can someone who
has done this before or understands ConfigParser better help me?

# Section I am talking about
			if line[0].isspace() and cursect is not None and optname:

				value = line.strip()
				if value:
					cursect[optname] = "%s\n%s" % (cursect[optname], value)


# _read method

	def _read(self, fp, fpname):
		cursect = None
		optname = None
		lineno = 0
		e = None
		while True:
			line = fp.readline()
			if not line:
				break
			lineno = lineno + 1
			# comment or blank line?
			if line.strip() == '' or line[0] in '#;':
				continue
			if line.split(None, 1)[0].lower() == 'rem' and line[0] in "rR":
				# no leading whitespace
				continue
			# continuation line
			print "line:%s\tcursect:%s\toptname:%s"%(line,cursect,optname)

			if line[0].isspace() and cursect is not None and optname:

				value = line.strip()
				if value:
					cursect[optname] = "%s\n%s" % (cursect[optname], value)
			# a section header or option header?
			else:
				# is it a section header?
				mo = self.SECTCRE.match(line)
				if mo:
					sectname = mo.group('header')
					if sectname in self._sections:
						cursect = self._sections[sectname]
					elif sectname == ConfigParser.DEFAULTSECT:
						cursect = self._defaults
					else:
						cursect = {'__name__':sectname}
						self._sections[sectname] = cursect
					# So sections can't start with a continuation line
					optname = None
				elif cursect is None:
					raise ConfigParser.MissingSectionHeaderError(fpname, lineno,
line)
				# an option line?
				else:
					mo = self.OPTCRE.match(line)
					if mo:
						optname, vi, optval = mo.group('option','vi','value')
						if vi in ('=',':') and ';' in optval:
							# ';' is a comment delimiter only if it follows
							# a spacing character
							pos = optval.find(';')
							if pos != -1 and optval[pos-1].isspace():
								optval = optval[:pos]
						optval = optval.strip()
						# allow empty values
						if optval == '""':
							optval = ''
						optname = self.optionxform(optname.rstrip())
						cursect[optname] = optval
					else:
						if not e:
							e = ConfigParser.ParsingError(fpname)
						e.append(lineno, repr(line))
		if e:
			raise e



--
Senthil