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pythonparsingconfiguration-filesini

Config file with a .py file

I have been told that doing this would be a not-very-good practice (it is present in the main answer of Python pattern for sharing configuration throughout application though):

configfile.py

SOUNDENABLED = 1
FILEPATH = 'D:\\TEMP\\hello.txt'

main.py

import configfile

if configfile.SOUNDENABLED == 1:
    ....

f = open(configfile.FILEPATH, 'a')
...

This is confirmed by the fact that many people use INI files for local configuration with ConfigParser module or iniparse or other similar modules.

Question: Why would using an INI file for local configuration + an INI parser Python module be better than just importing a configfile.py file containing the right config values as constants?

Solution

  • The only concern here is that a .py can have arbitrary Python code, so it has a potential to break your program in arbitrary ways.

    If you can trust your users to use it responsibly, there's nothing wrong with this setup. If fact, at one of my previous occupations, we were doing just that, without any problems that I'm aware of. Just on the contrary: it allowed users to eliminate duplication by autogenerating repetitive parts and importing other config files.

    Another concern is if you have many files, the configuration ones are better be separated from regular code ones, so users know which files they are supposed to be able to edit (the above link addresses this, too).