Small joy python # 5: Dynaconf - managing settings in the project

Some questions in the world of pit-bear development have the magic power to raise whole armies of people, direct them to holy war and force them to throw at each other in heaps of arguments, calculations and pieces of code. Sometimes, when the arguments end, the warring armies quickly move on to combat operations by throwing piles of verbal excrement.

Popular topics include questions:

• Should I even write this project in Python?
• What framework to take for development?
• Who faster library X or library Y?

Today I will try to carefully pick up just one of these magical topics - the question "How to manage configs in a project?".

Obviously, there are plenty of ways to configure a pit program.

• Environment variables (with heap files with .env ).
• All sorts of specialized files in the formats yaml, json, xml, ini.
• * .py files with classes or "constants".
• configparser from the standard python library.
• Samopisnye solutions based on classes, modules, files, telepathy, black magic (or all together).
• The managers of configs built into frameworks (as, for example, in Flask).

There are enough ways, you can choose anything and use it. But progress would stop if people did not try to improve and optimize everything (including what has been working for a long time and with acceptable quality). Hands of enthusiasts finally reached the configs of Python applications.

So dynaconf appeared

The developers were not particularly steamed up with the invention of their cunning approaches and gathered all popular methods of working with settings under one roof at once.

• You can read files (.json, .ini, yaml and newfangled .toml, which you should also get acquainted with)
• You can hook up environment variables and .env files
• You can use external storage and services (from simple Redis, to special secure storage with passwords)
• All this successfully merditsya with configs of frameworks of Flask and Django.

And, of course, on top added a set of buns, which makes life easier in any project.

• Easy switching of dev / staging / testing / production environments.
• The default settings.
• Turning features on and off in code (marketers, product managers and testers will be happy).
• A console utility that allows you to change project settings on the fly, without touching the code.