How to read configurations parameters from an INI file?

Question

I want to set some paths of excel files in the INI file to be read by my code in Python. Can you please tell me how to call them? In my ini file I have something like this:

[common]

default_path = "C:/Users/XX/Desktop/Bk.xlsx/"

Answer 1

1. For loading excel file install xlrd from pypi.

Command to install xlrd module : pip install xlrd

In config.ini dont need " so:

[general]
default_path = C:/Users/XX/Desktop/Bk.xlsx/

sample code:

import xlrd
import configparser

#Loading config
config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read("config.ini")
Excel_PATH = config["general"]["default_path"]

# Reading an excel file using Python 
wb = xlrd.open_workbook(Excel_PATH) 
sheet = wb.sheet_by_index(0) 

# For row 0 and column 0 
sheet.cell_value(0, 0) 

Answer 2

As mentioned in the comment to your question, you can use the configparser module.

import configparser

config = configparser.ConfigParser()
config.read('config.ini')

xlsx_path = config['common']['default_path']

Answer 3

Here is how to read and add your paths to your .INI file to the [common] section.

    import configparser

    config = configparser.ConfigParser()
    config.read('yourfile.INI')
    #set existing key-values in existing section
    config.set('common', 'default_path', 'your_path_to_file.xls')
    with open('yourfile.INI', 'w') as configfile:    
        config.write(configfile)

Answer 4

Let's say your config.ini files has the following content.

[meta-properties]
server=localhost
port=8000

[db-properties]
name=student
password=1234

[logs]
level=warn
logdirectory=/var/logs/newapp/

This can be read by the following code. The file data is stored into dictionary format so that you can access each property of ini file by its key name.

import configparser
from pprint import pprint


def as_dict(config):
    config_dict = {}
    for section in config.sections():
        config_dict[section] = {}
        for key, val in config.items(section):
            config_dict[section][key] = val
    return config_dict


if __name__ == '__main__':
    conf = configparser.ConfigParser()
    conf.read(['config.ini'], encoding='utf-8')
    pprint(as_dict(conf))

Gives output likes this

{
  'db-properties': {
    'name': 'student',
    'password': '1234'
  },
  'logs': {
    'level': 'warn',
    'logdirectory': '/var/logs/newapp/'
  },
  'meta-properties': {
    'port': '8000',
    'server': 'localhost'
  }
}```