Python’s standard library has modules for configuration file parsing (configparser), environment variable reading (os.environ), and command-line argument parsing (argparse). I want to write a program that does all those, and also:

• Has a cascade of option values:

  • default option values, overridden by
  • config file options, overridden by
  • environment variables, overridden by
  • command-line options.

• Allows one or more configuration file locations specified on the command line with e.g. --config-file foo.conf, and reads that (either instead of, or additional to, the usual configuration file). This must still obey the above cascade.

• Allows option definitions in a single place to determine the parsing behaviour for configuration files and the command line.

• Unifies the parsed options into a single collection of option values for the rest of the program to access without caring where they came from.

Everything I need is apparently in the Python standard library, but they don’t work together smoothly.

How can I achieve this with minimum deviation from the Python standard library?

The argparse module makes this not nuts, as long as you’re happy with a config file that looks like command line. (I think this is an advantage, because users will only have to learn one syntax.) Setting fromfile_prefix_chars to, for example, @, makes it so that,

my_prog --foo=bar

is equivalent to

my_prog @baz.conf

if @baz.conf is,

--foo
bar

You can even have your code look for foo.conf automatically by modifying argv

if os.path.exists('foo.conf'):
    argv = ['@foo.conf'] + argv
args = argparser.parse_args(argv)

The format of these configuration files is modifiable by making a subclass of ArgumentParser and adding a convert_arg_line_to_args method.

UPDATE: I finally got around to putting this on pypi. Install latest version via:

   pip install configargparser

Full help and instructions are here.

Original post

Here’s a little something that I hacked together. Feel free suggest improvements/bug-reports in the comments:

import argparse
import ConfigParser
import os

def _identity(x):
    return x

_SENTINEL = object()


class AddConfigFile(argparse.Action):
    def __call__(self,parser,namespace,values,option_string=None):
        # I can never remember if `values` is a list all the time or if it
        # can be a scalar string; this takes care of both.
        if isinstance(values,basestring):
            parser.config_files.append(values)
        else:
            parser.config_files.extend(values)


class ArgumentConfigEnvParser(argparse.ArgumentParser):
    def __init__(self,*args,**kwargs):
        """
        Added 2 new keyword arguments to the ArgumentParser constructor:

           config --> List of filenames to parse for config goodness
           default_section --> name of the default section in the config file
        """
        self.config_files = kwargs.pop('config',[])  #Must be a list
        self.default_section = kwargs.pop('default_section','MAIN')
        self._action_defaults = {}
        argparse.ArgumentParser.__init__(self,*args,**kwargs)


    def add_argument(self,*args,**kwargs):
        """
        Works like `ArgumentParser.add_argument`, except that we've added an action:

           config: add a config file to the parser

        This also adds the ability to specify which section of the config file to pull the 
        data from, via the `section` keyword.  This relies on the (undocumented) fact that
        `ArgumentParser.add_argument` actually returns the `Action` object that it creates.
        We need this to reliably get `dest` (although we could probably write a simple
        function to do this for us).
        """

        if 'action' in kwargs and kwargs['action'] == 'config':
            kwargs['action'] = AddConfigFile
            kwargs['default'] = argparse.SUPPRESS

        # argparse won't know what to do with the section, so 
        # we'll pop it out and add it back in later.
        #
        # We also have to prevent argparse from doing any type conversion,
        # which is done explicitly in parse_known_args.  
        #
        # This way, we can reliably check whether argparse has replaced the default.
        #
        section = kwargs.pop('section', self.default_section)
        type = kwargs.pop('type', _identity)
        default = kwargs.pop('default', _SENTINEL)

        if default is not argparse.SUPPRESS:
            kwargs.update(default=_SENTINEL)
        else:  
            kwargs.update(default=argparse.SUPPRESS)

        action = argparse.ArgumentParser.add_argument(self,*args,**kwargs)
        kwargs.update(section=section, type=type, default=default)
        self._action_defaults[action.dest] = (args,kwargs)
        return action

    def parse_known_args(self,args=None, namespace=None):
        # `parse_args` calls `parse_known_args`, so we should be okay with this...
        ns, argv = argparse.ArgumentParser.parse_known_args(self, args=args, namespace=namespace)
        config_parser = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
        config_files = [os.path.expanduser(os.path.expandvars(x)) for x in self.config_files]
        config_parser.read(config_files)

        for dest,(args,init_dict) in self._action_defaults.items():
            type_converter = init_dict['type']
            default = init_dict['default']
            obj = default

            if getattr(ns,dest,_SENTINEL) is not _SENTINEL: # found on command line
                obj = getattr(ns,dest)
            else: # not found on commandline
                try:  # get from config file
                    obj = config_parser.get(init_dict['section'],dest)
                except (ConfigParser.NoSectionError, ConfigParser.NoOptionError): # Nope, not in config file
                    try: # get from environment
                        obj = os.environ[dest.upper()]
                    except KeyError:
                        pass

            if obj is _SENTINEL:
                setattr(ns,dest,None)
            elif obj is argparse.SUPPRESS:
                pass
            else:
                setattr(ns,dest,type_converter(obj))

        return ns, argv


if __name__ == '__main__':
    fake_config = """
[MAIN]
foo:bar
bar:1
"""
    with open('_config.file','w') as fout:
        fout.write(fake_config)

    parser = ArgumentConfigEnvParser()
    parser.add_argument('--config-file', action='config', help="location of config file")
    parser.add_argument('--foo', type=str, action='store', default="grape", help="don't know what foo does ...")
    parser.add_argument('--bar', type=int, default=7, action='store', help="This is an integer (I hope)")
    parser.add_argument('--baz', type=float, action='store', help="This is an float(I hope)")
    parser.add_argument('--qux', type=int, default='6', action='store', help="this is another int")
    ns = parser.parse_args([])

    parser_defaults = {'foo':"grape",'bar':7,'baz':None,'qux':6}
    config_defaults = {'foo':'bar','bar':1}
    env_defaults = {"baz":3.14159}

    # This should be the defaults we gave the parser
    print ns
    assert ns.__dict__ == parser_defaults

    # This should be the defaults we gave the parser + config defaults
    d = parser_defaults.copy()
    d.update(config_defaults)
    ns = parser.parse_args(['--config-file','_config.file'])
    print ns
    assert ns.__dict__ == d

    os.environ['BAZ'] = "3.14159"

    # This should be the parser defaults + config defaults + env_defaults
    d = parser_defaults.copy()
    d.update(config_defaults)
    d.update(env_defaults)
    ns = parser.parse_args(['--config-file','_config.file'])
    print ns
    assert ns.__dict__ == d

    # This should be the parser defaults + config defaults + env_defaults + commandline
    commandline = {'foo':'3','qux':4} 
    d = parser_defaults.copy()
    d.update(config_defaults)
    d.update(env_defaults)
    d.update(commandline)
    ns = parser.parse_args(['--config-file','_config.file','--foo=3','--qux=4'])
    print ns
    assert ns.__dict__ == d

    os.remove('_config.file')

TODO

This implementation is still incomplete. Here’s a partial TODO list:

• (easy) Interaction with parser defaults
• (easy) If type conversion doesn’t work, check against how argparse handles error messages

Conform to documented behavior

• (easy) Write a function that figures out dest from args in add_argument, instead of relying on the Action object
• (trivial) Write a parse_args function which uses parse_known_args. (e.g. copy parse_args from the cpython implementation to guarantee it calls parse_known_args.)

Less Easy Stuff…

I haven’t tried any of this yet. It’s unlikely—but still possible!—that it could just work…

• (hard?) Mutual Exclusion
• (hard?) Argument Groups (If implemented, these groups should get a section in the config file.)
• (hard?) Sub Commands (Sub-commands should also get a section in the config file.)

There’s library that does exactly this called configglue.

configglue is a library that glues together python’s optparse.OptionParser and ConfigParser.ConfigParser, so that you don’t have to repeat yourself when you want to export the same options to a configuration file and a commandline interface.

It also supports environment variables.

There’s also another library called ConfigArgParse which is

A drop-in replacement for argparse that allows options to also be set via config files and/or environment variables.

You might be interested in PyCon talk about configuration by Łukasz Langa – Let Them Configure!

While I haven’t tried it by my own, there is ConfigArgParse library which states that it does most of things that you want:

A drop-in replacement for argparse that allows options to also be set via config files and/or environment variables.

It seems the standard library doesn’t address this, leaving each programmer to cobble configparser and argparse and os.environ all together in clunky ways.

The Python standard library does not provide this, as far as I know. I solved this for myself by writing code to use optparse and ConfigParser to parse the command line and config files, and provide an abstraction layer on top of them. However, you would need this as a separate dependency, which from your earlier comment seems to be unpalatable.

If you want to look at the code I wrote, it’s at http://liw.fi/cliapp/. It’s integrated into my “command line application framework” library, since that’s a large part of what the framework needs to do.

I was tried something like this recently, using “optparse”.

I set it up as a sub-class of OptonParser, with a ‘–Store’ and a ‘–Check’ command.

The code below should pretty much have you covered. You just need to define your own ‘load’ and ‘store’ methods which accept/return dictionaries and you’re prey much set.

class SmartParse(optparse.OptionParser):
    def __init__(self,defaults,*args,**kwargs):
        self.smartDefaults=defaults
        optparse.OptionParser.__init__(self,*args,**kwargs)
        fileGroup = optparse.OptionGroup(self,'handle stored defaults')
        fileGroup.add_option(
            '-S','--Store',
            dest='Action',
            action='store_const',const='Store',
            help='store command line settings'
        )
        fileGroup.add_option(
            '-C','--Check',
            dest='Action',
            action='store_const',const='Check',
            help ='check stored settings'
        )
        self.add_option_group(fileGroup)
    def parse_args(self,*args,**kwargs):
        (options,arguments) = optparse.OptionParser.parse_args(self,*args,**kwargs)
        action = options.__dict__.pop('Action')
        if action == 'Check':
            assert all(
                value is None 
                for (key,value) in options.__dict__.iteritems() 
            )
            print 'defaults:',self.smartDefaults
            print 'config:',self.load()
            sys.exit()
        elif action == 'Store':
            self.store(options.__dict__)
            sys.exit()
        else:
            config=self.load()
            commandline=dict(
                [key,val] 
                for (key,val) in options.__dict__.iteritems() 
                if val is not None
            )
            result = {}
            result.update(self.defaults)
            result.update(config)
            result.update(commandline)
            return result,arguments
    def load(self):
        return {}
    def store(self,optionDict):
        print 'Storing:',optionDict

To hit all those requirements, I would recommend writing your own library that uses both [opt|arg]parse and configparser for the underlying functionality.

Given the first two and the last requirement, I’d say you want:

Step one: Do a command line parser pass that only looks for the –config-file option.

Step two: Parse the config file.

Step three: set up a second command line parser pass using the output of the config file pass as the defaults.

The third requirement likely means you have to design your own option definition system to expose all the functionality of optparse and configparser that you care about, and write some plumbing to do conversions in between.

Here’s a module I hacked together that reads command-line arguments, environment settings, ini files, and keyring values as well. It’s also available in a gist.

"""
Configuration Parser

Configurable parser that will parse config files, environment variables,
keyring, and command-line arguments.



Example test.ini file:

    [defaults]
    gini=10

    [app]
    xini = 50

Example test.arg file:

    --xfarg=30

Example test.py file:

    import os
    import sys

    import config


    def main(argv):
        '''Test.'''
        options = [
            config.Option("xpos",
                          help="positional argument",
                          nargs='?',
                          default="all",
                          env="APP_XPOS"),
            config.Option("--xarg",
                          help="optional argument",
                          default=1,
                          type=int,
                          env="APP_XARG"),
            config.Option("--xenv",
                          help="environment argument",
                          default=1,
                          type=int,
                          env="APP_XENV"),
            config.Option("--xfarg",
                          help="@file argument",
                          default=1,
                          type=int,
                          env="APP_XFARG"),
            config.Option("--xini",
                          help="ini argument",
                          default=1,
                          type=int,
                          ini_section="app",
                          env="APP_XINI"),
            config.Option("--gini",
                          help="global ini argument",
                          default=1,
                          type=int,
                          env="APP_GINI"),
            config.Option("--karg",
                          help="secret keyring arg",
                          default=-1,
                          type=int),
        ]
        ini_file_paths = [
            '/etc/default/app.ini',
            os.path.join(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)),
                         'test.ini')
        ]

        # default usage
        conf = config.Config(prog='app', options=options,
                             ini_paths=ini_file_paths)
        conf.parse()
        print conf

        # advanced usage
        cli_args = conf.parse_cli(argv=argv)
        env = conf.parse_env()
        secrets = conf.parse_keyring(namespace="app")
        ini = conf.parse_ini(ini_file_paths)
        sources = {}
        if ini:
            for key, value in ini.iteritems():
                conf[key] = value
                sources[key] = "ini-file"
        if secrets:
            for key, value in secrets.iteritems():
                conf[key] = value
                sources[key] = "keyring"
        if env:
            for key, value in env.iteritems():
                conf[key] = value
                sources[key] = "environment"
        if cli_args:
            for key, value in cli_args.iteritems():
                conf[key] = value
                sources[key] = "command-line"
        print '\n'.join(['%s:\t%s' % (k, v) for k, v in sources.items()])


    if __name__ == "__main__":
        if config.keyring:
            config.keyring.set_password("app", "karg", "13")
        main(sys.argv)

Example results:

    $APP_XENV=10 python test.py api --xarg=2 @test.arg
    <Config xpos=api, gini=1, xenv=10, xini=50, karg=13, xarg=2, xfarg=30>
    xpos:   command-line
    xenv:   environment
    xini:   ini-file
    karg:   keyring
    xarg:   command-line
    xfarg:  command-line


"""
import argparse
import ConfigParser
import copy
import os
import sys

try:
    import keyring
except ImportError:
    keyring = None


class Option(object):
    """Holds a configuration option and the names and locations for it.

    Instantiate options using the same arguments as you would for an
    add_arguments call in argparse. However, you have two additional kwargs
    available:

        env: the name of the environment variable to use for this option
        ini_section: the ini file section to look this value up from
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        self.args = args or []
        self.kwargs = kwargs or {}

    def add_argument(self, parser, **override_kwargs):
        """Add an option to a an argparse parser."""
        kwargs = {}
        if self.kwargs:
            kwargs = copy.copy(self.kwargs)
            try:
                del kwargs['env']
            except KeyError:
                pass
            try:
                del kwargs['ini_section']
            except KeyError:
                pass
        kwargs.update(override_kwargs)
        parser.add_argument(*self.args, **kwargs)

    @property
    def type(self):
        """The type of the option.

        Should be a callable to parse options.
        """
        return self.kwargs.get("type", str)

    @property
    def name(self):
        """The name of the option as determined from the args."""
        for arg in self.args:
            if arg.startswith("--"):
                return arg[2:].replace("-", "_")
            elif arg.startswith("-"):
                continue
            else:
                return arg.replace("-", "_")

    @property
    def default(self):
        """The default for the option."""
        return self.kwargs.get("default")


class Config(object):
    """Parses configuration sources."""

    def __init__(self, options=None, ini_paths=None, **parser_kwargs):
        """Initialize with list of options.

        :param ini_paths: optional paths to ini files to look up values from
        :param parser_kwargs: kwargs used to init argparse parsers.
        """
        self._parser_kwargs = parser_kwargs or {}
        self._ini_paths = ini_paths or []
        self._options = copy.copy(options) or []
        self._values = {option.name: option.default
                        for option in self._options}
        self._parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(**parser_kwargs)
        self.pass_thru_args = []

    @property
    def prog(self):
        """Program name."""
        return self._parser.prog

    def __getitem__(self, key):
        return self._values[key]

    def __setitem__(self, key, value):
        self._values[key] = value

    def __delitem__(self, key):
        del self._values[key]

    def __contains__(self, key):
        return key in self._values

    def __iter__(self):
        return iter(self._values)

    def __len__(self):
        return len(self._values)

    def get(self, key, *args):
        """
        Return the value for key if it exists otherwise the default.
        """
        return self._values.get(key, *args)

    def __getattr__(self, attr):
        if attr in self._values:
            return self._values[attr]
        else:
            raise AttributeError("'config' object has no attribute '%s'"
                                 % attr)

    def build_parser(self, options, **override_kwargs):
        """."""
        kwargs = copy.copy(self._parser_kwargs)
        kwargs.update(override_kwargs)
        if 'fromfile_prefix_chars' not in kwargs:
            kwargs['fromfile_prefix_chars'] = '@'
        parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(**kwargs)
        if options:
            for option in options:
                option.add_argument(parser)
        return parser

    def parse_cli(self, argv=None):
        """Parse command-line arguments into values."""
        if not argv:
            argv = sys.argv
        options = []
        for option in self._options:
            temp = Option(*option.args, **option.kwargs)
            temp.kwargs['default'] = argparse.SUPPRESS
            options.append(temp)
        parser = self.build_parser(options=options)
        parsed, extras = parser.parse_known_args(argv[1:])
        if extras:
            valid, pass_thru = self.parse_passthru_args(argv[1:])
            parsed, extras = parser.parse_known_args(valid)
            if extras:
                raise AttributeError("Unrecognized arguments: %s" %
                                     ' ,'.join(extras))
            self.pass_thru_args = pass_thru + extras
        return vars(parsed)

    def parse_env(self):
        results = {}
        for option in self._options:
            env_var = option.kwargs.get('env')
            if env_var and env_var in os.environ:
                value = os.environ[env_var]
                results[option.name] = option.type(value)
        return results

    def get_defaults(self):
        """Use argparse to determine and return dict of defaults."""
        parser = self.build_parser(options=self._options)
        parsed, _ = parser.parse_known_args([])
        return vars(parsed)

    def parse_ini(self, paths=None):
        """Parse config files and return configuration options.

        Expects array of files that are in ini format.
        :param paths: list of paths to files to parse (uses ConfigParse logic).
                      If not supplied, uses the ini_paths value supplied on
                      initialization.
        """
        results = {}
        config = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
        config.read(paths or self._ini_paths)
        for option in self._options:
            ini_section = option.kwargs.get('ini_section')
            if ini_section:
                try:
                    value = config.get(ini_section, option.name)
                    results[option.name] = option.type(value)
                except ConfigParser.NoSectionError:
                    pass
        return results

    def parse_keyring(self, namespace=None):
        """."""
        results = {}
        if not keyring:
            return results
        if not namespace:
            namespace = self.prog
        for option in self._options:
            secret = keyring.get_password(namespace, option.name)
            if secret:
                results[option.name] = option.type(secret)
        return results

    def parse(self, argv=None):
        """."""
        defaults = self.get_defaults()
        args = self.parse_cli(argv=argv)
        env = self.parse_env()
        secrets = self.parse_keyring()
        ini = self.parse_ini()

        results = defaults
        results.update(ini)
        results.update(secrets)
        results.update(env)
        results.update(args)

        self._values = results
        return self

    @staticmethod
    def parse_passthru_args(argv):
        """Handles arguments to be passed thru to a subprocess using '--'.

        :returns: tuple of two lists; args and pass-thru-args
        """
        if '--' in argv:
            dashdash = argv.index("--")
            if dashdash == 0:
                return argv[1:], []
            elif dashdash > 0:
                return argv[0:dashdash], argv[dashdash + 1:]
        return argv, []

    def __repr__(self):
        return "<Config %s>" % ', '.join([
            '%s=%s' % (k, v) for k, v in self._values.iteritems()])


def comma_separated_strings(value):
    """Handles comma-separated arguments passed in command-line."""
    return map(str, value.split(","))


def comma_separated_pairs(value):
    """Handles comma-separated key/values passed in command-line."""
    pairs = value.split(",")
    results = {}
    for pair in pairs:
        key, pair_value = pair.split('=')
        results[key] = pair_value
    return results

You can use ChainMap for this. Take a look at my example that I provided for in “Which is the best way to allow configuration options be overridden at the command line in Python?” SO question.

The library confect I built is precisely to meet most of your needs.

• It can load configuration file multiple times through given file paths or module name.
• It loads configurations from environment variables with a given prefix.

• It can attach command line options to some click commands

  (sorry, it’s not argparse, but click is better and much more advanced. confect might support argparse in the future release).

• Most importantly, confect loads Python configuration files not JSON/YMAL/TOML/INI. Just like IPython profile file or DJANGO settings file, Python configuration file is flexible and easier to maintain.

For more information, please check the README.rst in the project repository. Be aware of that it supports only Python3.6 up.

Examples

Attaching command line options

import click
from proj_X.core import conf

@click.command()
@conf.click_options
def cli():
    click.echo(f'cache_expire = {conf.api.cache_expire}')

if __name__ == '__main__':
    cli()

It automatically creates a comprehensive help message with all properties and default values declared.

$ python -m proj_X.cli --help
Usage: cli.py [OPTIONS]

Options:
  --api-cache_expire INTEGER  [default: 86400]
  --api-cache_prefix TEXT     [default: proj_X_cache]
  --api-url_base_path TEXT    [default: api/v2/]
  --db-db_name TEXT           [default: proj_x]
  --db-username TEXT          [default: proj_x_admin]
  --db-password TEXT          [default: your_password]
  --db-host TEXT              [default: 127.0.0.1]
  --help                      Show this message and exit.

Loading environment variables

It only needs one line to load environment variables

conf.load_envvars('proj_X')