Pythonic reading from config files

Question

Hi,

I have a python class which reads a config file using ConfigParser:

Config file:

[geography]
Xmin=6.6
Xmax=18.6
Ymin=36.6
YMax=47.1

Python code:

class Slicer:
    def __init__(self, config_file_name):
        config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
        config.read(config_file_name)
        # Rad the lines from the file
        self.x_min = config.getfloat('geography', 'xmin')
        self.x_max = config.getfloat('geography', 'xmax')
        self.y_min = config.getfloat('geography', 'ymin')
        self.y_max = config.getfloat('geography', 'ymax')

I feel that the last four lines are repetitive, and should somehow be compressed to one Pythonic line that would create a self.item variable for each item in the section.

Any ideas?

Adam

UPDATE:

Following your answers, I've modified my code to:

    for item in config.items('geography'):
        setattr(self, '_'+item[0], float(item[1]))

Now,

   print self.__dict__
   >>> {'_xmax': 18.600000000000001, '_ymax': 47.100000000000001, 
        '_ymin': 36.600000000000001, '_xmin': 6.5999999999999996}

Answer 1

How about something like:

for key in ['xmin','xmax','ymin','ymax']:
    self.__dict__[key] = config.getfloat('geography',key);

Note that the above will assign it to self.xmin instead of self.x_min... however, if you are fine with that naming, then this should work... otherwise, mapping between names would be more code than the original.

Answer 2

I usually try to avoid external interactions in a constructor - makes it hard to test the code. Better pass a config parser instance or a fp-like object instead of a filename.

Answer 3

for line in ['x_min', 'x_max', 'y_min', 'y_max']:

   setattr(self, line, config.getfloat('geography', line.replace('_', '')))