::-- limodou [2005-09-14 06:31:19]

1. Dict4Ini

This module is used to process ini format configuration file. It acts just like a dict, but you can also access it's sections and options with attribute syntax, just like x.test.

1.1. Why reinvent this module?

I used Config4Obj module for GoogleTalkBot software (confbot) to deal with configuration file. But I found its lacks on:

• Only can access options as x['name']['o'], but not as x.name.o
• You must create section first, then you can access its options. So if you didn't create x['name']={} section, so you cann't do x['name']['o'] = 3

• The option's data can be saved as string format, but as read out again, Config4Obj cann't convert it to their original value type, so you must conver it yourself. I didn't tried validate module ships with Config4Obj.

• Didn't support unicode

Above is only my opinions, so they may be not right.

So I decide to reinvent a new module to solve these lacks, I named it as Dict4Ini, it means you can access the config object just like a dict.

1.2. What's it features

• as simple as others
• you can access options according to dict syntax, just like x['name']['o'] = 1, x['name'].keys(), x['name'].values(), etc.
• you also can access options according to attr syntax, just like x.name.o = 1, x.name.keys(), x.name.values(), etc. So the name must be Identifier or single word.
• you can save comments in it(but this feature is not tested so much)
• support multi level section, subsection name will just like: [firsub/secsub]
• can save config items order
• support multi data types: string, unicode, int, float, list/tuple, dict, etc, you can save them to or regain them from config file

• can convert to dict new

• auto detect BOM of utf-8 file new

• It's a little module, just for my mind, so if you like, you could try it, but if you don't like, just skip it, that's ok

1.3. Where can I download it?

• Now the project is hosted in code.google, so you can visit it in here.

• Visit the http://wiki.woodpecker.org.cn/moin/Dict4Ini site

• Download it from dict4ini-0.9.2.zip

1.4. About license

• before GPL
• now BSD you can see it in the source code

1.5. What's new?

• 2007/06/26 Version 0.9.1
  • Fix float convert bug
• 2007/06/13 Version 0.9

  • Thanks for Victor Stinner giving a output format patch, so you can define your own output format "%s = %s" to anything you want, for example "%s=%s" or "%s:%s". And Dict4Ini will auto remove '%s' from the fromat string, and the strip() the rest of the string, then use it to split the key and value in Ini file. For example, if you using "%s:%s", Dict4Ini will get "%s:%s".replace('%s', ).strip(), then use ':' to split the line.

• 2007/04/20 Version 0.8
  • Add exception process when parsing file
  • Add BOM detect
• 2007/04/19 Version 0.7
  • Fix '\' escape
• 2006/03/21 Version 0.6
  • Fix ordereditems bug.
• 2006/01/04 Version 0.5
  • 2006/01/04
    • Add ordereditems() method, so you can get the items according the ini file definition
  • 2005/12/30
    • Support onelevel parameter, you can set it True, than only one level can be used, so that the key can include section delimeter char in it.
    • Support sectiondelimeter parmeter, you can set the section delimeter to which you want
• 2005/12/12 Version 0.4
  • Fixed a bug about "\" in option's value, thanks to Andreas Kaiser
• 2005/12/09 Version 0.3

  • Adding dict() method, then you can change the DictIni object to dict type, so you can really use it as a dict alternative

• 2005/10/16 Version 0.2
  • Saving config items order
  • Support float format

1.6. Examples

   1     import dict4ini
   2 
   3     x = dict4ini.DictIni('test.ini')
   4     x.common.name = 'limodou'
   5     x.common.bool = 1
   6     x.common.list = [3, 1.2, 'Hello', 'have spaces']
   7     x.save()

   1     import dict4ini
   2 
   3     x = dict4ini.DictIni('test.ini')
   4     print x.common.bool
   5     print x.common.list
   6     print x.common.name