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Improve configuration docs a bit
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plaes committed Aug 17, 2011
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Expand Up @@ -5,9 +5,10 @@ Configuration Handling

.. versionadded:: 0.3

Applications need some kind of configuration. There are different things
you might want to change like toggling debug mode, the secret key, and a
lot of very similar things.
Applications need some kind of configuration. There are different settings
you might want to change depending on the application environment like
toggling the debug mode, setting the secret key, and other such
environment-specific things.

The way Flask is designed usually requires the configuration to be
available when the application starts up. You can hardcode the
Expand All @@ -31,8 +32,7 @@ can be modified just like any dictionary::
app.config['DEBUG'] = True

Certain configuration values are also forwarded to the
:attr:`~flask.Flask` object so that you can read and write them from
there::
:attr:`~flask.Flask` object so you can read and write them from there::

app.debug = True

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -139,10 +139,11 @@ The following configuration values are used internally by Flask:
Configuring from Files
----------------------

Configuration becomes more useful if you can configure from a file, and
ideally that file would be outside of the actual application package so that
you can install the package with distribute (:ref:`distribute-deployment`)
and still modify that file afterwards.
Configuration becomes more useful if you can store it in a separate file,
ideally located outside the actual application package. This makes
packaging and distributing your application possible via various package
handling tools (:ref:`distribute-deployment`) and finally modifying the
configuration file afterwards.

So a common pattern is this::

Expand Down Expand Up @@ -170,12 +171,13 @@ The configuration files themselves are actual Python files. Only values
in uppercase are actually stored in the config object later on. So make
sure to use uppercase letters for your config keys.

Here is an example configuration file::
Here is an example of a configuration file::

# Example configuration
DEBUG = False
SECRET_KEY = '?\xbf,\xb4\x8d\xa3"<\x9c\xb0@\x0f5\xab,w\xee\x8d$0\x13\x8b83'

Make sure to load the configuration very early on so that extensions have
Make sure to load the configuration very early on, so that extensions have
the ability to access the configuration when starting up. There are other
methods on the config object as well to load from individual files. For a
complete reference, read the :class:`~flask.Config` object's
Expand All @@ -186,9 +188,9 @@ Configuration Best Practices
----------------------------

The downside with the approach mentioned earlier is that it makes testing
a little harder. There is no one 100% solution for this problem in
general, but there are a couple of things you can do to improve that
experience:
a little harder. There is no single 100% solution for this problem in
general, but there are a couple of things you can keep in mind to improve
that experience:

1. create your application in a function and register blueprints on it.
That way you can create multiple instances of your application with
Expand All @@ -203,10 +205,10 @@ experience:
Development / Production
------------------------

Most applications need more than one configuration. There will at least
be a separate configuration for a production server and one used during
development. The easiest way to handle this is to use a default
configuration that is always loaded and part of version control, and a
Most applications need more than one configuration. There should be at
least separate configurations for the production server and the one used
during development. The easiest way to handle this is to use a default
configuration that is always loaded and part of the version control, and a
separate configuration that overrides the values as necessary as mentioned
in the example above::

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