Setup in your package

Create a default/sample settings.ini file in the module directory of your package, with a [default] section and any other [sections] you want (i.e. app environments)

[default]
something = 100

[dev]
redis_url = redis://localhost:6379/1
something = 500

[test]
redis_url = redis://localhost:6379/9
things = none, true, false, 1, 2.5, dogs

Create a MANIFEST.in file in your package directory with the following

include settings.ini

Update the setup.py file of the package to include the setting.ini file and add settings-helper to install_requires list

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

setup(
    name='package-name',
    version='0.0.1',
    ...
    packages=find_packages(),
    install_requires=[
        'settings-helper',
        ...
    ],
    include_package_data=True,
    package_dir={'': '.'},
    package_data={
        '': ['*.ini'],
    },
    ...
)

Note, your package directory tree will be something like the following

package-name
├── .gitignore
├── LICENSE.txt
├── MANIFEST.in
├── README.md
├── README.rst
├── package_name/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── settings.ini
└── setup.py

Usage

Use in __init__.py of package

import settings_helper as sh

get_setting = sh.settings_getter(__name__)
something = get_setting('something')
something_else = get_setting('something_else', 'default_val')

Set APP_ENV environment variable to be one of your section names when starting your Python interpreter/server. APP_ENV defaults to dev if it is not set.

• The get_setting func will return the value of the requested variable if it is set in the section specified in APP_ENV.
• If the variable is not in the section, it will pull the value from the [default] section
• If the varialbe is not in the [default] section either, then return the optional fallback value passed in the default keyword argument to get_setting (which defaults to an empty string)
• If the requested variable exists in the environment (or its uppercase equivalent), it will be used instead of getting from settings.ini
• The value is automatically converted to a bool, None, int, or float if it should be
• If the value contains any of (, ; |) then a list of converted values will be returned

The first time that settings_getter func is invoked, it looks for a settings.ini file in ~/.config/<package-name>/settings.ini.

• If it does not find it, it will copy the default settings.ini from the module's install directory to that location
• If the settings.ini file does not exist in the module's install directory, an exception is raised

Alternate Usage

import settings_helper as sh

settings = sh.get_all_settings(__name__)

or

import settings_helper as sh

settings = sh.get_all_settings(__name__).get(sh.APP_ENV, {})

The get_all_settings func returns a dict containing all sections other than 'default'.

• If a setting is defined in 'default', but not in a particular section, the setting in 'default' will appear under the section
• If a setting (or upper-case equivalent) is defined as an environment variable, that value will be used for all sections that use it

Tip

In your <package-name>/tests/__init__.py file, add the following so the test section of settings is automatically used

import os

os.environ['APP_ENV'] = 'test'