Question

I’m trying to read a java multiline i18n properties file. Having lines like:

messages.welcome=Hello\
 World!
messages.bye=bye

Using this code:

import configobj
properties = configobj.ConfigObj(propertyFileName)

But with multilines values it fails.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

According to the ConfigObj documentation, configobj requires you to surround multiline values in triple quotes:

Values that contain line breaks
(multi-line values) can be surrounded
by triple quotes. These can also be
used if a value contains both types of
quotes. List members cannot be
surrounded by triple quotes:

If modifying the properties file is out of the question, I suggest using configparser:

In config parsers, values can span
multiple lines as long as they are
indented more than the key that holds
them. By default parsers also let
empty lines to be parts of values.

Here’s a quick proof of concept:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# coding: utf-8

from __future__ import print_function

try:
    import ConfigParser as configparser
except ImportError:
    import configparser

try:
    import StringIO
except ImportError:
    import io.StringIO as StringIO

test_ini = """
[some_section]
messages.welcome=Hello\
 World
messages.bye=bye
"""
config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.readfp(StringIO.StringIO(test_ini))
print(config.items('some_section'))

Output:

[(‘messages.welcome’, ‘Hello World’),
(‘messages.bye’, ‘bye’)]