Is there an easy way to find the runtime environment in Pyramid

Question

In pyramid, I need to render my templates according to different runtime environments -- enable google analytics, use minified code, etc. (when in production). Is there an easy way to find out the current environment -- perhaps an existing flag to find out which ini file was used?

Answer 1

Pyramid INI files can hold arbitrary configuration entries, so why not include a flag in your files that distinguishes between production and development deployments?

I'd do it like this; in your production .ini file:

[app:main]
production_deployment = True # Set to False in your development .ini file

Pass this value on to the Pyramid Configurator:

def main(global_config, **settings):
    # ...
    from pyramid.settings import asbool
    production_deployment = asbool(settings.get(
               'production_deployment', 'false'))
    settings['production_deployment'] = production_deployment
    config = Configurator(settings=settings)

You can now access the settings from just about anywhere in your Pyramid code. For example, in a request handler:

settings = request.registry.settings
if settings['production_deployment']:
    # Enable some production code here.

However, I'd also use more finegrained settings in this case; a flag for enabling Google Analytics, one for minifying resources, etc. That way you can test each individual setting in your development environment, write unit tests for these switches, etc.

Answer 2

I set this sort of thing as an environmental variable named something like PYRAMID_ENV which can be viewed via os.environ. For example in your code:

import os

pyramid_env = os.environ.get('PYRAMID_ENV', 'debug')

if pyramid_env == 'debug':
    # Setup debug things...
else:
    # Setup production things...

Then you can set the variable in the init script or when starting the server:

PYRAMID_ENV=production python server.py

Docs on access to environmental variables: http://docs.python.org/library/os.html#os.environ