Which is the best way to allow configuration options be overridden at the command line in Python?

一世执手 提交于 2019-11-29 19:19:25
Von

I just discovered you can do this with argparse.ArgumentParser.parse_known_args(). Start by using parse_known_args() to parse a configuration file from the commandline, then read it with ConfigParser and set the defaults, and then parse the rest of the options with parse_args(). This will allow you to have a default value, override that with a configuration file and then override that with a commandline option. E.g.:

Default with no user input:

$ ./argparse-partial.py
Option is "default"

Default from configuration file:

$ cat argparse-partial.config 
[Defaults]
option=Hello world!
$ ./argparse-partial.py -c argparse-partial.config 
Option is "Hello world!"

Default from configuration file, overridden by commandline:

$ ./argparse-partial.py -c argparse-partial.config --option override
Option is "override"

argprase-partial.py follows. It is slightly complicated to handle -h for help properly.

import argparse
import ConfigParser
import sys

def main(argv=None):
    # Do argv default this way, as doing it in the functional
    # declaration sets it at compile time.
    if argv is None:
        argv = sys.argv

    # Parse any conf_file specification
    # We make this parser with add_help=False so that
    # it doesn't parse -h and print help.
    conf_parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
        description=__doc__, # printed with -h/--help
        # Don't mess with format of description
        formatter_class=argparse.RawDescriptionHelpFormatter,
        # Turn off help, so we print all options in response to -h
        add_help=False
        )
    conf_parser.add_argument("-c", "--conf_file",
                        help="Specify config file", metavar="FILE")
    args, remaining_argv = conf_parser.parse_known_args()

    defaults = { "option":"default" }

    if args.conf_file:
        config = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
        config.read([args.conf_file])
        defaults.update(dict(config.items("Defaults")))

    # Parse rest of arguments
    # Don't suppress add_help here so it will handle -h
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(
        # Inherit options from config_parser
        parents=[conf_parser]
        )
    parser.set_defaults(**defaults)
    parser.add_argument("--option")
    args = parser.parse_args(remaining_argv)
    print "Option is \"{}\"".format(args.option)
    return(0)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    sys.exit(main())

Check out ConfigArgParse - its a new PyPI package (open source) that serves as a drop in replacement for argparse with added support for config files and environment variables.

I'm using ConfigParser and argparse with subcommands to handle such tasks. The important line in the code below is:

subp.set_defaults(**dict(conffile.items(subn)))

This will set the defaults of the subcommand (from argparse) to the values in the section of the config file.

A more complete example is below:

####### content of example.cfg:
# [sub1]
# verbosity=10
# gggg=3.5
# [sub2]
# host=localhost

import ConfigParser
import argparse

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
subparsers = parser.add_subparsers()

parser_sub1 = subparsers.add_parser('sub1')
parser_sub1.add_argument('-V','--verbosity', type=int, dest='verbosity')
parser_sub1.add_argument('-G', type=float, dest='gggg')

parser_sub2 = subparsers.add_parser('sub2')
parser_sub2.add_argument('-H','--host', dest='host')

conffile = ConfigParser.SafeConfigParser()
conffile.read('example.cfg')

for subp, subn in ((parser_sub1, "sub1"), (parser_sub2, "sub2")):
    subp.set_defaults(**dict(conffile.items(subn)))

print parser.parse_args(['sub1',])
# Namespace(gggg=3.5, verbosity=10)
print parser.parse_args(['sub1', '-V', '20'])
# Namespace(gggg=3.5, verbosity=20)
print parser.parse_args(['sub1', '-V', '20', '-G','42'])
# Namespace(gggg=42.0, verbosity=20)
print parser.parse_args(['sub2', '-H', 'www.example.com'])
# Namespace(host='www.example.com')
print parser.parse_args(['sub2',])
# Namespace(host='localhost')

I can't say it's the best way, but I have an OptionParser class that I made that does just that - acts like optparse.OptionParser with defaults coming from a config file section. You can have it...

class OptionParser(optparse.OptionParser):
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        import sys
        import os
        config_file = kwargs.pop('config_file',
                                 os.path.splitext(os.path.basename(sys.argv[0]))[0] + '.config')
        self.config_section = kwargs.pop('config_section', 'OPTIONS')

        self.configParser = ConfigParser()
        self.configParser.read(config_file)

        optparse.OptionParser.__init__(self, **kwargs)

    def add_option(self, *args, **kwargs):
        option = optparse.OptionParser.add_option(self, *args, **kwargs)
        name = option.get_opt_string()
        if name.startswith('--'):
            name = name[2:]
            if self.configParser.has_option(self.config_section, name):
                self.set_default(name, self.configParser.get(self.config_section, name))

Feel free to browse the source. Tests are in a sibling directory.

Try to this way

# encoding: utf-8
import imp
import argparse


class LoadConfigAction(argparse._StoreAction):
    NIL = object()

    def __init__(self, option_strings, dest, **kwargs):
        super(self.__class__, self).__init__(option_strings, dest)
        self.help = "Load configuration from file"

    def __call__(self, parser, namespace, values, option_string=None):
        super(LoadConfigAction, self).__call__(parser, namespace, values, option_string)

        config = imp.load_source('config', values)

        for key in (set(map(lambda x: x.dest, parser._actions)) & set(dir(config))):
            setattr(namespace, key, getattr(config, key))

Use it:

parser.add_argument("-C", "--config", action=LoadConfigAction)
parser.add_argument("-H", "--host", dest="host")

And create example config:

# Example config: /etc/myservice.conf
import os
host = os.getenv("HOST_NAME", "localhost")

Update: This answer still has issues; for example, it cannot handle required arguments, and requires an awkward config syntax. Instead, ConfigArgParse seems to be exactly what this question asks for, and is a transparent, drop-in replacement.

One issue with the current is that it will not error if the arguments in the config file are invalid. Here's a version with a different downside: you'll need to include the -- or - prefix in the keys.

Here's the python code (Gist link with MIT license):

# Filename: main.py
import argparse

import configparser

if __name__ == "__main__":
    parser = argparse.ArgumentParser()
    parser.add_argument('--config_file', help='config file')
    args, left_argv = parser.parse_known_args()
    if args.config_file:
        with open(args.config_file, 'r') as f:
            config = configparser.SafeConfigParser()
            config.read([args.config_file])

    parser.add_argument('--arg1', help='argument 1')
    parser.add_argument('--arg2', type=int, help='argument 2')

    for k, v in config.items("Defaults"):
        parser.parse_args([str(k), str(v)], args)

    parser.parse_args(left_argv, args)
print(args)

Here's an example of a config file:

# Filename: config_correct.conf
[Defaults]
--arg1=Hello!
--arg2=3

Now, running

> python main.py --config_file config_correct.conf --arg1 override
Namespace(arg1='override', arg2=3, config_file='test_argparse.conf')

However, if our config file has an error:

# config_invalid.conf
--arg1=Hello!
--arg2='not an integer!'

Running the script will produce an error, as desired:

> python main.py --config_file config_invalid.conf --arg1 override
usage: test_argparse_conf.py [-h] [--config_file CONFIG_FILE] [--arg1 ARG1]
                             [--arg2 ARG2]
main.py: error: argument --arg2: invalid int value: 'not an integer!'

The main downside is that this uses parser.parse_args somewhat hackily in order to obtain the error checking from ArgumentParser, but I am not aware of any alternatives to this.

fromfile_prefix_chars

Maybe not the perfect API, but worth knowing about. main.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python3
import argparse
parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(fromfile_prefix_chars='@')
parser.add_argument('-a', default=13)
parser.add_argument('-b', default=42)
print(parser.parse_args())

Then:

$ printf -- '-a\n1\n-b\n2\n' > opts.txt
$ ./main.py
Namespace(a=13, b=42)
$ ./main.py @opts.txt
Namespace(a='1', b='2')
$ ./main.py @opts.txt -a 3 -b 4
Namespace(a='3', b='4')
$ ./main.py -a 3 -b 4 @opts.txt
Namespace(a='1', b='2')

Documentation: https://docs.python.org/3.6/library/argparse.html#fromfile-prefix-chars

Tested on Python 3.6.5, Ubuntu 18.04.

You can use ChainMap

A ChainMap groups multiple dicts or other mappings together to create a single, updateable view. If no maps are specified, a single empty dictionary is provided so that a new chain always has at least one mapping.

You can combine values from command line, environment variables, configuration file, and in case if the value is not there define a default value.

import os
from collections import ChainMap, defaultdict

options = ChainMap(command_line_options, os.environ, config_file_options,
               defaultdict(lambda: 'default-value'))
value = options['optname']
value2 = options['other-option']


print(value, value2)
'optvalue', 'default-value'
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