.. NOTE: Make sure to edit the template for this file in docs_tmpl/ and .. not the cog-generated version.

======= Everett

Everett is a Python configuration library for your app.

:Code: https://github.com/willkg/everett :Issues: https://github.com/willkg/everett/issues :License: MPL v2 :Documentation: https://everett.readthedocs.io/

Goals

Goals of Everett:

1. flexible configuration from multiple configured environments
2. easy testing with configuration
3. easy automated documentation of configuration for users

From that, Everett has the following features:

• is flexible for your configuration environment needs and supports process environment, env files, dicts, INI files, YAML files, and writing your own configuration environments
• facilitates helpful error messages for users trying to configure your software
• has a Sphinx extension for documenting configuration including autocomponentconfig and automoduleconfig directives for automatically generating configuration documentation
• facilitates testing of configuration values
• supports parsing values of a variety of types like bool, int, lists of things, classes, and others and lets you write your own parsers
• supports key namespaces
• supports component architectures
• works with whatever you're writing--command line tools, web sites, system daemons, etc

Everett is inspired by python-decouple <https://github.com/henriquebastos/python-decouple>_ and configman <https://configman.readthedocs.io/en/latest/>_.

Install

Run::

$ pip install everett

Some configuration environments require additional dependencies::

# For INI support
$ pip install 'everett[ini]'

# for YAML support
$ pip install 'everett[yaml]'

Additionally, if you want to use the Sphinx extension to document your configuration, you need to add Sphinx::

# to use the Sphinx extension
$ pip install 'everett[sphinx]'

Quick start

Example::

# myserver.py

"""
Minimal example showing how to use configuration for a web app.
"""

from everett.manager import ConfigManager

config = ConfigManager.basic_config(
    doc="Check https://example.com/configuration for documentation."
)

host = config("host", default="localhost")
port = config("port", default="8000", parser=int)
debug_mode = config(
    "debug",
    default="False",
    parser=bool,
    doc="Set to True for debugmode; False for regular mode",
)

print(f"host: {host}")
print(f"port: {port}")
print(f"debug_mode: {debug_mode}")

Then you can run it::

$ python myserver.py
host: localhost
port: 8000
debug_mode: False

You can set environment variables to affect configuration::

$ PORT=7000 python myserver.py
host: localhost
port: 7000
debug_mode: False

It checks a .env file in the current directory::

$ echo "HOST=127.0.0.1" > .env
$ python myserver.py
host: 127.0.0.1
port: 8000
debug_mode: False

It spits out useful error information if configuration is wrong::

$ DEBUG=foo python myserver.py
<traceback>
everett.InvalidValueError: ValueError: 'foo' is not a valid bool value
DEBUG requires a value parseable by everett.manager.parse_bool
DEBUG docs: Set to True for debugmode; False for regular mode
Project docs: Check https://example.com/configuration for documentation.

You can test your code using config_override in your tests to test various configuration values::

# testdebug.py

"""
Minimal example showing how to override configuration values when testing.
"""

import unittest

from everett.manager import ConfigManager, config_override


class App:
    def __init__(self):
        config = ConfigManager.basic_config()
        self.debug = config("debug", default="False", parser=bool)


class TestDebug(unittest.TestCase):
    def test_debug_on(self):
        with config_override(DEBUG="on"):
            app = App()
            self.assertTrue(app.debug)

    def test_debug_off(self):
        with config_override(DEBUG="off"):
            app = App()
            self.assertFalse(app.debug)


if __name__ == "__main__":
    unittest.main()

Run that::

..
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ran 2 tests in 0.000s

OK

That's perfectly fine for a 12-Factor <https://12factor.net/>_ app.

When you outgrow that or need different variations of it, you can switch to creating a ConfigManager instance that meets your needs.

Why not other libs?

Most other libraries I looked at had one or more of the following issues:

• were tied to a specific web app framework
• didn't allow you to specify configuration sources
• provided poor error messages when users configure things wrong
• had a global configuration object
• made it really hard to override specific configuration when writing tests
• had no facilities for autogenerating configuration documentation

History

3.3.0 (in development)

Backwards incompatible changes:

• Dropped support for Python 3.7. (#220)

Fixes and features:

• Added support for Python 3.12 (#221)

• Fix env file parsing in regards to quotes. (#230)

3.2.0 (March 21st, 2023)

Fixes and features:

• Implement default_if_empty argument which will return the default value (if specified) if the value is the empty string. (#205)

• Implement parse_time_period parser for converting time periods like "10m4s" into the total number of seconds that represents.

  ::

  >>> from everett.manager import parse_time_period
  >>> parse_time_period("4m")
  240
  

  (#203)

• Implement parse_data_size parser for converting values like "40gb" into the total number of bytes that represents.

  ::

  >>> from everett.manager import parse_data_size
  >>> parse_time_period("40gb")
  40000000000
  

  (#204)

• Fix an UnboundLocalError when using automoduleconfig and providing a Python dotted path to a thing that either kicks up an ImportError or doesn't exist. Now it raises a more helpful error. (#201)

3.1.0 (October 26th, 2022)

Fixes and features:

• Add support for Python 3.11. (#187)

• Add raise_configuration_error method on ConfigManager. (#185)

• Improve automoduleconfig to walk the whole AST and document configuration set by assign::

  SOMEVAR = _config("somevar")
  

  and dict::

  SOMEGROUP = {
      "SOMEVAR": _config("somevar"),
  }
  

  (#184)

• Fix options not showing up on ReadTheDocs. (#186)

3.0.0 (January 13th, 2022)

Backwards incompatible changes:

• Dropped support for Python 3.6. (#176)

• Dropped autocomponent Sphinx directive in favor of autocomponentconfig.

Fixes and features:

• Add support for Python 3.10. (#173)

• Rework namespaces so that you can apply a namespace (with_namespace()) after binding a component (with_options()) (#175)

• Overhauled, simplified, and improved documentation. Files with example output are now generated using cog <https://pypi.org/project/cogapp/>_.

• Rewrite Sphinx extension.

  This now supports manually documenting configuration using everett:component and everett:option directives.

  This adds :everett:component: and :everett:option: roles for linking to specific configuration in the docs.

  It also addsh autocomponentconfig and automoduleconfig directives for automatically generating documentation.

  When using these directives, items are added to the index and everything is linkable making it easier to find and talk to users about specific configuration items. (#172)

2.0.1 (August, 23rd, 2021)

Fixes:

• Fix Sphinx warning about roles in Everett sphinxext. (#165)

• Fix get_runtime_config to work with slots (#166)

2.0.0 (July 27th, 2021)

Backwards incompatible changes:

• This radically reduces the boilerplate required to define components. It also improves the connections between things so it's easier to:

  • determine the configuration required for a single component (taking into account superclasses, overriding, etc)
  • determine the runtime configuration for a component tree given a configuration manager

  Previously, components needed to subclass RequiredConfigMixin and provide a "required_config" class attribute. Something like this::

  from everett.component import RequiredConfigMixin, ConfigOptions
  
  class SomeClass(RequiredConfigMixin):
      required_config = ConfigOptions()
      required_config.add_option(
          "some_option",
          default="42",
      )
  

  That's been slimmed down and now looks like this::

  from everett.manager import Option
  
  class SomeClass:
      class Config:
          some_option = Option(default="42")
  

  That's much simpler and the underlying implementation code is less tangled and complex, too.

  If you used everett.component.RequiredConfigMixin or everett.component.ConfigOptions, you'll need to update your classes.

  If you didn't use those things, then you don't have to make any changes.

  See the documentation on components for how it all works now.

• Changed the way configuration variables are referred to in configuration error messages. Previously, I tried to use a general way "namespace=something key=somethingelse" but that's confusing and won't match up with project documentation.

  I changed it to the convention used in the process environment and env files. For example, FOO_BAR.

  If you use INI or YAML for configuration, you can specify a msg_builder argument when you build the ConfigManager and build error messages tailored to your users.

Fixes:

• Switch to src/ repository layout.

• Added type annotations and type checking during CI. (#155)

• Standardized on f-strings across the codebase.

• Switched Sphinx theme.

• Update of documentation, fleshed out and simplified examples, cleaned up language, reworked structure of API section (previously called Library or some unhelpful thing like that), etc.

1.0.3 (October 28th, 2020)

Backwards incompatible changes:

• Dropped support for Python 3.4. (#96)

• Dropped support for Python 3.5. (#116)

Fixes:

• Add support for Python 3.7. (#68)

• Add support for Python 3.8. (#102)

• Add support for Python 3.9. (#117)

• Reformatted code with Black, added Makefile, switched to GitHub Actions.

• Fix get_runtime_config() to infer namespaces. (#118)

• Fix RemovedInSphinx50Warning. (#115)

• Documentation fixes and clarifications.

1.0.2 (February 22nd, 2019)

Fixes:

• Improve documentation.

• Fix problems when there are nested BoundConfigs. Now they work correctly. (#90)

• Add "meta" to options letting you declare additional data on the option when you're adding it.

  For example, this lets you do things like mark options as "secrets" so that you know which ones to ****** out when logging your configuration. (#88)

1.0.1 (January 8th, 2019)

Fixes:

• Fix documentation issues.

• Package missing everett.ext. Thank you, dsblank! (#84)

1.0.0 (January 7th, 2019)

Backwards incompatible changes:

• Dropped support for Python 2.7. Everett no longer supports Python 2. (#73)

• Dropped support for Python 3.3 and added support for Python 3.7. Thank you, pjz! (#68)

• Moved ConfigIniEnv to a different module. Now you need to import it like this::

  from everett.ext.inifile import ConfigIniEnv
  

  (#79)

Features:

• Everett now logs configuration discovery in the everett logger at the logging.DEBUG level. This is helpful for trouble-shooting some kinds of issues. (#74)

• Everett now has a YAML configuration environment. In order to use it, you need to install its requirements::

  $ pip install everett[yaml]
  

  Then you can import it like this::

  from everett.ext.yamlfile import ConfigYamlEnv
  

  (#72)

Fixes:

• Everett no longer requires configobj--it's now optional. If you use ConfigIniEnv, you can install it with::

  $ pip install everett[ini]
  

  (#79)

• Fixed list parsing and file discovery in ConfigIniEnv so they match the docs and are more consistent with other envs. Thank you, apollo13! (#71)

• Added a .basic_config() for fast opinionated setup that uses the process environment and a .env file in the current working directory.

• Switching to semver.

0.9 (April 7th, 2017)

Changed:

• Rewrite Sphinx extension. The extension is now in the everett.sphinxext module and the directive is now .. autocomponent::. It generates better documentation and it now indexes Everett components and options.

  This is backwards-incompatible. You will need to update your Sphinx configuration and documentation.

• Changed the HISTORY.rst structure.

• Changed the repr for everett.NO_VALUE to "NO_VALUE".

• InvalidValueError and ConfigurationMissingError now have namespace, key, and parser attributes allowing you to build your own messages.

Fixed:

• Fix an example in the docs where the final key was backwards. Thank you, pjz!

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.8 (January 24th, 2017)

Added:

• Add :namespace: and :case: arguments to autoconfig directive. These make it easier to cater your documentation to your project's needs.

• Add support for Python 3.6.

Minor documentation fixes and updates.

0.7 (January 5th, 2017)

Added:

• Feature: You can now include documentation hints and urls for ConfigManager objects and config options. This will make it easier for your users to debug configuration errors they're having with your software.

Fixed:

• Fix ListOf so it returns empty lists rather than a list with a single empty string.

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.6 (November 28th, 2016)

Added:

• Add RequiredConfigMixin.get_runtime_config() which returns the runtime configuration for a component or tree of components. This lets you print runtime configuration at startup, generate INI files, etc.

• Add ConfigObjEnv which lets you use an object for configuration. This works with argparse's Namespace amongst other things.

Changed:

• Change :show-docstring: to take an optional value which is the attribute to pull docstring content from. This means you don't have to mix programming documentation with user documentation--they can be in different attributes.

• Improve configuration-related exceptions. With Python 3, configuration errors all derive from ConfigurationError and have helpful error messages that should make it clear what's wrong with the configuration value. With Python 2, you can get other kinds of Exceptions thrown depending on the parser used, but configuration error messages should still be helpful.

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.5 (November 8th, 2016)

Added:

• Add :show-docstring: flag to autoconfig directive.

• Add :hide-classname: flag to autoconfig directive.

Changed:

• Rewrite ConfigIniEnv to use configobj which allows for nested sections in INI files. This also allows you to specify multiple INI files and have later ones override earlier ones.

Fixed:

• Fix autoconfig Sphinx directive and add tests--it was all kinds of broken.

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.4 (October 27th, 2016)

Added:

• Add raw_value argument to config calls. This makes it easier to write code that prints configuration.

Fixed:

• Fix listify(None) to return [].

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.3.1 (October 12th, 2016)

Fixed:

• Fix alternate_keys with components. Previously it worked for everything but components. Now it works with components, too.

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.3 (October 6th, 2016)

Added:

• Add ConfigManager.from_dict() shorthand for building configuration instances.

• Add .get_namespace() to ConfigManager and friends for getting the complete namespace for a given config instance as a list of strings.

• Add alternate_keys to config call. This lets you specify a list of keys in order to try if the primary key doesn't find a value. This is helpful for deprecating keys that you used to use in a backwards-compatible way.

• Add root: prefix to keys allowing you to look outside of the current namespace and at the configuration root for configuration values.

Changed:

• Make ConfigDictEnv case-insensitive to keys and namespaces.

Documentation fixes and updates.

0.2 (August 16th, 2016)

Added:

• Add ConfigEnvFileEnv for supporting .env files. Thank you, Paul!

• Add "on" and "off" as valid boolean values. This makes it easier to use config for feature flippers. Thank you, Paul!

Changed:

• Change ConfigIniEnv to take a single path or list of paths. Thank you, Paul!

• Make NO_VALUE falsy.

Fixed:

• Fix __call__ returning None--it should return NO_VALUE.

Lots of docs updates: finished the section about making your own parsers, added a section on using dj-database-url, added a section on django-cache-url and expanded on existing examples.

0.1 (August 1st, 2016)

Initial writing.