Which is better for creating a settings file for Python programs, the built-in module (ConfigParser) or the independent project (ConfigObj), or using the YAML data serialization format? I have heard that ConfigObj is easier to use than ConfigParser, even though it is not a built-in library. I have also read that PyYAML is easy to use, though YAML takes a bit of time to use. Ease of implementation aside, which is the best option for creating a settings/configuration file?
ConfigParser is a Python class which implements a basic configuration language for Python programs. It provides a structure similar to Microsoft Windows INI files. ConfigParser allows to write Python programs which can be customized by end users easily.
configparser comes from Python 3 and as such it works well with Unicode.
Reading a key from YAML config file We can read the data using yaml. load() method which takes file pointer and Loader as parameters. FullLoader handles the conversion from YAML scalar values to the Python dictionary. The index [0] is used to select the tag we want to read.
It depends on what you want to store in your config files and how you use them
If you do round tripping (yaml→code→yaml) and want comments preserved you cannot use PyYAML
or ConfigParser
.
If you want to preserve the order of your keys (e.g. when you check in your config files), PyYAML
doesn't do that unless you specify !!omap
(which makes it less easy to update than a normal mapping)
If you want to have complex structures with lists of unnamed elements containing mappings/dictionaries, then ConfigParser
and ConfigObj
won't help you as the INI files key-value pairs have to go into sections and lists can only be values.
The ruamel.yaml
implementation of the YAML reader supports all of the above ¹. I have used fuzzyman's excellent ConfigObj for round trip comment preservation for a long time, as well as PyYAML for more complex structures and this combines best of both worlds. ruamel.yaml
includes the yaml
utility that can convert ConfigObj
INI files to YAML
¹ ruamel.yaml is a YAML library that supports YAML 1.2 (I recommend using that, but then I am the author of the package). PyYAML only supports (most of) YAML 1.1.
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