Python - Best/Cleanest way to define constant lists or dictionarys

Question

First time user on stack overflow and I'm excited to be here.

INTRO: I recently began the magical adventure into the world of Python programming - I love it. Now everything has gone smoothly in my awkward transition from C, but I'm having trouble creating something which would be synonymous to a HEADER file (.h).

PROBLEM: I have medium sized dictionaries and lists (about 1,000 elements), lengthy enums, and '#defines' (well not really), but I can't find a CLEAN way to organize them all. In C, I would throw them all in a header file and never think again about it, however, in Python that's not possible or so I think.

CURRENT DIRTY SOLUTION: I'm initializing all CONSTANT variables at the top of either the MODULE or FUNCTION (module if multiple functions need it).

CONCLUSION: I would be forever grateful if someone had come up with a way to CLEANLY organize constant variable's.

THANK YOU SO MUCH!

Answer 1

Put your constants into their own module:

# constants.py  RED = 1 BLUE = 2 GREEN = 3 

Then import that module and use the constants:

import constants  print "RED is", constants.RED 

The constants can be any value you like, I've shown integers here, but lists and dicts would work just the same.

Answer 2

Usually I do this:

File: constants.py

CONSTANT1 = 'asd' CONSTANT_FOO = 123 CONSTANT_BAR = [1, 2, 5] 

File: your_script.py

from constants import CONSTANT1, CONSTANT_FOO # or if you want *all* of them # from constants import *  ... 

Now your constants are in one file and you can nicely import and use them.