This is a module for making automated edits to an existing configparser-compatible ini file. It operates like a CST, parsing into a tree of nodes which can then be edited and written back, preserving whitespace and comments.
(Tested as test_example_from_readme
in the test suite)
Let's say you have the following in setup.cfg
:
[metadata]
# the package name
name = imperfect
# slurp the readme
long_description = file: README.md
[options]
packages = imperfect
and you'd like to make an edit setting long_description_content_type
in
[metadata]
but don't care where it goes. Default is at the end of the section.
import imperfect
import io
with open("setup.cfg") as f:
data = f.read()
conf: imperfect.ConfigFile = imperfect.parse_string(data)
conf.set_value("metadata", "long_description_content_type", "text/markdown")
print(conf.text)
What if you want to have control over the odering, and want it right before
long_description
? Now with diffing and more internals...
import moreorless
import imperfect
import io
with open("setup.cfg") as f:
data = f.read()
conf: imperfect.ConfigFile = imperfect.parse_string(data)
metadata_section = conf["metadata"]
# Ignoring some whitespace for now, this looks like
# long_description_content_type = text/markdown\n
# [ entry ]
# [ key ][eq][ value ]
value = imperfect.ValueLine(
whitespace_before_text='',
text='text/markdown',
whitespace_after_text='',
newline='\n',
)
new_entry = imperfect.ConfigEntry(
key="long_description_content_type",
whitespace_before_equals=" ",
equals="=",
whitespace_before_value=" ",
value = [value],
)
try:
pos = metadata_section.index("long_description")
except KeyError:
pos = len(metadata_section.entries)
metadata_section.entries.insert(pos, new_entry)
print(moreorless.unified_diff(data, conf.text, "config.cfg"), end="")
with open("setup.cfg", "w") as f:
f.write(conf.text)
# or
with open("setup.cfg", "w") as f:
conf.build(f)
Following the convention used by configobj, whitespace generally is accumulated and stored on the node that follows it. This does reasonably well for adding entries, but can have unexpected consequences when removing them. For example,
[section1]
# this belongs to k1
k1 = foo
# this belongs to k2
k2 = foo
# k3 = foo (actually belongs to the following section)
[section2]
An insertion to the end of section1
would go between k2 and the k3 comment.
Removing section2
would also remove the commented-out k3
.
I'm open to ideas that improve this.
The goal is to be as compatible as possible with RawConfigParser
, which
includes keeping some odd behaviors that are bugs that have been around for a
decade and probably can't be changed now.
- Section names are very lenient.
[[x]]yy
is a legal section line, and the resulting section name is[x
. Theyy
here is always allowed (we keep it in the tree though), even withinline_comments
off. \r
(carriage return) is considered a whitespace, but not a line terminator. This is a difference in behavior betweenstr.splitlines(True)
andlist(io)
-- configparser uses the latter.\t
counts as single whitespace.
Option Default Imperfect supports
allow_no_value False only False
delimiters =,: only =,:
comment_prefixes #,; only #,;
empty_lines_in_values True True (False is very close to working)
We use hypothesis to generate plausible ini files and for all the ones that RawConfigParser can accept, we test that we accept, have the same keys/values, and can roundtrip it.
This currently happens in text mode only.
If you would like to test support on your file, try python -m imperfect.verify <filename>
configobj
has a completely different method for line continuations- I'm not aware of others with the goal of preserving whitespace
Usage of this library should work back to 3.7, but development (and mypy compatibility) only on 3.10-3.12. Linting requires 3.12 for full fidelity.
This library follows meanver which basically means semver along with a promise to rename when the major version changes.
imperfect is copyright Tim Hatch, and licensed under
the MIT license. See the LICENSE
file for details.