Using Python's ConfigParser to read a file without section name

Question

Hello:

I am using ConfigParser to read the runtime configuration of a script.

I would like to have the flexibility of not providing a section name (there are scripts which are simple enough; they don't need a 'section'). ConfigParser will throw the NoSectionError exception, and will not accept the file.

How can I make ConfigParser simply retrieve the (key, value) tuples of a config file without section names? For instance:

key1=val1
key2:val2

I would rather not write to the config file.

Answer 1

I think you cannot. You can of course build your own.

Answer 2

You could always do a modification with try/except

try:
    # Your code here
except NoSectionError:
    f = open("config.conf", "r")
    settings = {}
    for line in f:
        if ':' in line:
            splitchar = ':'
        elif '=' in line:
            splitchar = '='
        else:
            #do something else
        kv = line.split(splitchar)
        settings[kv[0]] = kv[1]

I think that should do what you want. It's completely untested but I'm pretty sure it'll work for those two cases you provided.

Answer 3

Alex Martelli provided a solution for using ConfigParser to parse .properties files (which are apparently section-less config files).

His solution is a file-like wrapper that will automagically insert a dummy section heading to satisfy ConfigParser's requirements.