Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook

How it works...

The read_config function does three major things:

• Allows us to parse plain lists of options without sections. This allows us to parse simple config files:

option1 = value1
option2 = value2

• Applies default values for all options declared in the configuration's default schema.
• Converts all values to the type provided in the schema.

The first feature is provided by trapping any MissingSectionHeaderError exception raised during parsing and automatically adding a [main] section if it's missing. All the options provided without any section will be recorded under the main section.

Providing default values is instead done by doing a first pass through all the sections and options declared in the schema and setting them to the ...