Question

In pyramid, I need to render my templates according to different runtime environments — enable google analytics, use minified code, etc. (when in production). Is there an easy way to find out the current environment — perhaps an existing flag to find out which ini file was used?

Answer 1

Pyramid INI files can hold arbitrary configuration entries, so why not include a flag in your files that distinguishes between production and development deployments?

I’d do it like this; in your production .ini file:

[app:main]
production_deployment = True # Set to False in your development .ini file

Pass this value on to the Pyramid Configurator:

def main(global_config, **settings):
    # ...
    from pyramid.settings import asbool
    production_deployment = asbool(settings.get(
               'production_deployment', 'false'))
    settings['production_deployment'] = production_deployment
    config = Configurator(settings=settings)

You can now access the settings from just about anywhere in your Pyramid code. For example, in a request handler:

settings = request.registry.settings
if settings['production_deployment']:
    # Enable some production code here.

However, I’d also use more finegrained settings in this case; a flag for enabling Google Analytics, one for minifying resources, etc. That way you can test each individual setting in your development environment, write unit tests for these switches, etc.