Using ConfigParser to read a file without section name

Question

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 s

Answer 1

Enlightened by this answer by jterrace, I come up with this solution:

1. Read entire file into a string
2. Prefix with a default section name
3. Use StringIO to mimic a file-like object

ini_str = '[root]\n' + open(ini_path, 'r').read()
ini_fp = StringIO.StringIO(ini_str)
config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
config.readfp(ini_fp)

EDIT for future googlers: As of Python 3.4+ readfp is deprecated, and StringIO is not needed anymore. Instead we can use read_string directly:

with open('config_file') as f:
    file_content = '[dummy_section]\n' + f.read()

config_parser = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
config_parser.read_string(file_content)