usersettings v1.0.7

Portable Local Settings Storage for Python

• Automatic storage of settings information in a simple flat text file (ConfigParser format)
• Automatically stored in an OS-appropriate location (via appdirs). For example, the settings for an app with the chosen identifier com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest would be stored in:
  • ~/Library/Application Support/com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest/settings.cfg on OS X
  • ~/.config/com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest/settings.cfg on Linux
  • C:\Documents and Settings\<User>\Application Data\com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest\com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest\settings.cfg (or an equivalent location depending on various factors) on Windows
• Interface modeled on the argparse module.

Example:

The following example code shows the entire interface. This program will change its output each time it is run.

#!/usr/bin/python
from usersettings import Settings
import time

# Identify for your app, specify what settings you have then
# load em', use em', save em'

s = Settings('com.example.apps.UserSettingsTest')    
s.add_setting("counter", int, default=0)
s.add_setting("animal", str, default="turtles")
s.add_setting("runtimes", list, [])
s.load_settings() # loads anything that might be saved

s.counter += 1
if s.counter > 2:
    # Tired of turtles?
    s.animal = "the Rabbit of Caerbannog"
s.runtimes.append(time.time())
s.save_settings()

print "I've run {0.counter} time(s). I like {0.animal}!".format(s)
print "I've been launched at these times: ",
print ", ".join([str(x) for x in s.runtimes])

Running this example produces:

$ python ./example.py 
I've run 1 time(s). I like turtles!
I've been launched at these times:  1370046713.82
$ python ./example.py 
I've run 2 time(s). I like turtles!
I've been launched at these times:  1370046713.82, 1370046716.99
$ python ./example.py 
I've run 3 time(s). I like the Rabbit of Caerbannog!
I've been launched at these times:  1370046713.82, 1370046716.99, 1370046719.49
$ 

License

This module is licensed under a BSD-style licence. See LICENSE.txt for details.

Notes

• Uses the appdirs module from pypi.
• Created after asking this question on stack overflow
• usersettings not your cup of tea? Have a look at configmgr, an earlier project which also leverages appdirs (which I helpfully discovered only after creating this module)