Question

I have config file,

[local]
    variable1 : val1 ;#comment1
    variable2 : val2 ;#comment2

code like this reads only value of the key:

class Config(object):
    def __init__(self):
        self.config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
        self.config.read('config.py')

    def get_path(self):
        return self.config.get('local', 'variable1')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    c = Config()
    print c.get_path()

but i also want to read the comment present along with the value, any suggestions in this regards will be very helpful.

Answer 1

Your only solutions is to write another ConfigParser overriding the method _read(). In your ConfigParser you should delete all checks about comment removal. This is a dangerous solution, but should work.

class ValuesWithCommentsConfigParser(ConfigParser.ConfigParser):

    def _read(self, fp, fpname):
        from ConfigParser import DEFAULTSECT, MissingSectionHeaderError, ParsingError

        cursect = None                        # None, or a dictionary
        optname = None
        lineno = 0
        e = None                              # None, or an exception
        while True:
            line = fp.readline()
            if not line:
                break
            lineno = lineno + 1
            # comment or blank line?
            if line.strip() == '' or line[0] in '#;':
                continue
            if line.split(None, 1)[0].lower() == 'rem' and line[0] in "rR":
                # no leading whitespace
                continue
                # continuation line?
            if line[0].isspace() and cursect is not None and optname:
                value = line.strip()
                if value:
                    cursect[optname].append(value)
            # a section header or option header?
            else:
                # is it a section header?
                mo = self.SECTCRE.match(line)
                if mo:
                    sectname = mo.group('header')
                    if sectname in self._sections:
                        cursect = self._sections[sectname]
                    elif sectname == DEFAULTSECT:
                        cursect = self._defaults
                    else:
                        cursect = self._dict()
                        cursect['__name__'] = sectname
                        self._sections[sectname] = cursect
                        # So sections can't start with a continuation line
                    optname = None
                # no section header in the file?
                elif cursect is None:
                    raise MissingSectionHeaderError(fpname, lineno, line)
                # an option line?
                else:
                    mo = self._optcre.match(line)
                    if mo:
                        optname, vi, optval = mo.group('option', 'vi', 'value')
                        optname = self.optionxform(optname.rstrip())
                        # This check is fine because the OPTCRE cannot
                        # match if it would set optval to None
                        if optval is not None:
                            optval = optval.strip()
                            # allow empty values
                            if optval == '""':
                                optval = ''
                            cursect[optname] = [optval]
                        else:
                            # valueless option handling
                            cursect[optname] = optval
                    else:
                        # a non-fatal parsing error occurred.  set up the
                        # exception but keep going. the exception will be
                        # raised at the end of the file and will contain a
                        # list of all bogus lines
                        if not e:
                            e = ParsingError(fpname)
                        e.append(lineno, repr(line))
            # if any parsing errors occurred, raise an exception
        if e:
            raise e

        # join the multi-line values collected while reading
        all_sections = [self._defaults]
        all_sections.extend(self._sections.values())
        for options in all_sections:
            for name, val in options.items():
                if isinstance(val, list):
                    options[name] = '\n'.join(val)

In the ValuesWithCommentsConfigParser I fixed some imports and deleted the appropriate sections of code.

Using the same config.ini from my previous answer, I can prove the previous code is correct.

config = ValuesWithCommentsConfigParser()
config.read('config.ini')
assert config.get('local', 'variable1') == 'value1 ; comment1'
assert config.get('local', 'variable2') == 'value2 # comment2'