Question

Ok i am planning on using the configparser module for creation of a few ini configuration files, I have ran into some trouble though.

How can i write certain sections of my config to different ini files?

I have read all through the official docs on it, and don’t seem to see anything that allows this to be done.

Any suggestions?

Answer 1

You could define a subclass of one of the ConfigParser classes and override its write method. For example:

class MySafeConfigParser(ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser):
    def write(self, fileobject, *sections):
        'Write an .ini-format representation of the specified sections'
        temp = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser(self.defaults())
        for s in sections:
            temp.add_section(s)
            for i, v in self.items(s):
                temp.set(s, i, v)
        temp.write(fileobject)

I can test my subclass with something like this:

config = MySafeConfigParser({ 'foo': '5.0' })

config.add_section('Section1')
config.set('Section1', 'foo', '3.1415')
config.set('Section1', 'bar', 'baz')

config.add_section('Section2')
config.set('Section2', 'abc', 'def')
config.set('Section2', 'ghi', 'jkl')

config.add_section('Section3')
config.set('Section3', 'mno', 'pqr')
config.set('Section3', 'stu', 'vwx')

with open('section1.ini', 'wb') as f:
    config.write(f, 'Section1')

with open('sections2and3.ini', 'wb') as f:
    config.write(f, 'Section2', 'Section3')

After I run this code, the file section1.ini contains:

[DEFAULT]
foo = 5.0

[Section1]
foo = 3.1415
bar = baz

and sections2and3.ini contains:

[DEFAULT]
foo = 5.0

[Section2]
foo = 5.0
abc = def
ghi = jkl

[Section3]
foo = 5.0
mno = pqr
stu = vwx

And best of all, the ConfigParser.read(...) method already accepts multiple filenames, so I can re-read both configuration files with:

config = MySafeConfigParser()
config.read(['section1.ini', 'sections2and3.ini'])

Edit: I missed that the original question was asking about Python 3, so here’s the above code converted to Python 3:

class MySafeConfigParser(configparser.ConfigParser):
    def write(self, fileobject, *sections, space_around_delimiters = True):
        'Write an .ini-format representation of the specified sections'
        temp = configparser.ConfigParser(self.defaults())
        for s in sections:
            temp.add_section(s)
            for i, v in self.items(s):
                temp.set(s, i, v)
        temp.write(fileobject, space_around_delimiters)

And the test code converted to Python 3:

config = MySafeConfigParser({ 'foo': '5.0' })

config['Section1'] = {}
config['Section1']['foo'] = '3.1415'
config['Section1']['bar'] = 'baz'

config['Section2'] = {}
config['Section2']['abc'] = 'def'
config['Section2']['ghi'] = 'jkl'

config['Section3'] = {}
config['Section3']['mno'] = 'pqr'
config['Section3']['stu'] = 'vwx'

with open('section1.ini', 'w') as f:
    config.write(f, 'Section1')

with open('sections2and3.ini', 'w') as f:
    config.write(f, 'Section2', 'Section3')