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

The easiest way to do this is to use python's CSV parser, in my opinion. Here's a read/write function demonstrating this approach as well as a test driver. This should work provided the values are not allowed to be multi-line. :)

import csv
import operator

def read_properties(filename):
    """ Reads a given properties file with each line of the format key=value.  Returns a dictionary containing the pairs.

    Keyword arguments:
        filename -- the name of the file to be read
    """
    result={ }
    with open(filename, "rb") as csvfile:
        reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter='=', escapechar='\\', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
        for row in reader:
            if len(row) != 2:
                raise csv.Error("Too many fields on row with contents: "+str(row))
            result[row[0]] = row[1] 
    return result

def write_properties(filename,dictionary):
    """ Writes the provided dictionary in key-sorted order to a properties file with each line of the format key=value

    Keyword arguments:
        filename -- the name of the file to be written
        dictionary -- a dictionary containing the key/value pairs.
    """
    with open(filename, "wb") as csvfile:
        writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter='=', escapechar='\\', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
        for key, value in sorted(dictionary.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(0)):
                writer.writerow([ key, value])

def main():
    data={
        "Hello": "5+5=10",
        "World": "Snausage",
        "Awesome": "Possum"
    }

    filename="test.properties"
    write_properties(filename,data)
    newdata=read_properties(filename)

    print "Read in: "
    print newdata
    print

    contents=""
    with open(filename, 'rb') as propfile:
        contents=propfile.read()
    print "File contents:"
    print contents

    print ["Failure!", "Success!"][data == newdata]
    return

if __name__ == '__main__': 
     main()