PyFlexCfg

Simple and flexible configuration handler for Python projects.

Contents

1. Description
2. Features
3. Installation
4. Configuration
   • General
   • Logging
5. Basic Usage
6. Overriding values
7. Handling secrets
   • Encrypting secrets
   • Decrypting secrets
8. Additional constructors
   • String constructor
   • Paths constructors

Description

PyFlexCfg allows you to store your project's configuration in YAML files and seamlessly load them as a unified object when imported into your Python code.

The handler is using PyYAML library for handling YAML files due to its lower dependencies footprint and loading speed, therefore YAML files of version 1.2 might not be loaded properly.

Features:

• YAML config: Organize your project's settings using easy-to-read YAML files within nested directories to logically group your configurations.
• Unified Access: Load all configuration files as a single object for easy access.
• Values Override: Dynamically override configuration values using environment variables.
• Secrets Management: Encrypt and decrypt sensitive data directly within your configuration files
• Additional constructors: several custom YAML constructors to expand functionality of the configuration.

Installation

pip install pyflexcfg

Configuration

General

There are several options that could be set as an environment variable in order to adjust PyFlexCfg behaviour:

1. By default, PyFlexCfg looks for configuration files in a directory config within the current working directory. To specify a different path, define an environment variable with the absolute path to the desired configuration root directory:

   PYFLEX_CFG_ROOT_PATH=/path/to/config

2. In order to use encrypted configuration values, you must set an environment variable with encryption key, which will be used for secrets decryption:

   PYFLEX_CFG_KEY=super_secret_key

Logging

In case you want to enable logging for the handler you can get the appropriate logger by executing:

import logging

cfg_logger = logging.getLogger('pyflexcfg')

After that you can configure logging options, add logger handlers and so on the way you prefer.

Basic Usage

Assuming the following configuration file structure:

 \project               <-- working directory
     ├─ config
         ├─ general.yaml
         ├─ env
             ├─ dev.yaml
             ├─ prd.yaml

And each YAML file contains a configuration option like this:

data: test

You can load and use the configurations as follows:

from pyflexcfg import Cfg

print(Cfg.general.data)  # Access data from general.yaml
print(Cfg.env.dev.data)  # Access data from env/dev.yaml
print(Cfg.env.prd.data)  # Access data from env/prd.yaml

Note: Directories, file names and value names in your configuration structure must be compatible with Python attribute naming rules.

Overriding values

You can override values in YAML files using environment variables. To do this, create environment variables that reflect the configuration values you want to override. This feature is particularly useful in environments like Docker Compose, where you can pass environment-specific settings to containers dynamically, enabling seamless configuration management across different deployment setups.

For example, if you want to overwrite the value of

Cfg.env.dev.data

Define an environment variable:

CFG__ENV__DEV__DATA=some_value

Having that set, call the method

from pyflexcfg import Cfg

Cfg.update_from_env()

The value from the environment variable will replace the corresponding value from the YAML file.

Handling secrets

Any sensitive data present in configuration files should be kept as encrypted!

PyFlexCfg allows you to encrypt your sensitive date with AES encryption prior to placing it in config files and auto-decrypt it upon configuration loading if you have an encryption key set in environment variable.

Encrypting secrets

Use the AESCipher class to encrypt your secrets before putting them in config files:

from pyflexcfg import AESCipher

aes = AESCipher('secret-key')
aes.encrypt('some-secret-to-encrypt')

This will produce an output like:

b'A1u6BIE2xGtYTSoFRE83H0VHsAW3nrv4WB+T/FEAj1fsh8HIId9r/Rskl0bnDHTI'

Store the encrypted secret as bytes or string in a YAML file with the !encr prefix:

my_secret: !encr b'A1u6BIE2xGtYTSoFRE83H0VHsAW3nrv4WB+T/FEAj1fsh8HIId9r/Rskl0bnDHTI'  # as bytes

my_secret: !encr A1u6BIE2xGtYTSoFRE83H0VHsAW3nrv4WB+T/FEAj1fsh8HIId9r/Rskl0bnDHTI  # as string

Decrypting secrets

When PyFlexCfg loads the configuration and the environment variable PYFLEX_CFG_KEY is set with your encryption key, it will automatically decrypt values marked with !encr prefix and store them in Cfg as a Secret strings, masking them in logs and console outputs with ******.

Use the AESCipher class to manually decrypt your secrets if needed:

from pyflexcfg import AESCipher

aes = AESCipher('secret-key')
aes.decrypt(b'A1u6BIE2xGtYTSoFRE83H0VHsAW3nrv4WB+T/FEAj1fsh8HIId9r/Rskl0bnDHTI')

Additional constructors

Several custom constructors are available for use in your configuration files to expand its functionality:

String constructor

Implemented with the !string prefix and can be used for composing strings, URLs and so on.

String construction example:

Assume having a file ./config/data.yaml with content

string_var: !string ['This', ' is', ' a', ' test', ' string']

from pyflexcfg import Cfg
print(Cfg.data.string_var)

>> 'This is a test string'

URL construction example:

Assume having a file ./config/data.yaml with content

base_url: &base https://test.com
slug: &slug /test/
full_url: !string [*base, *slug, index.html]

from pyflexcfg import Cfg
print(Cfg.data.full_url)

>> 'https://test.com/test/index.html'

Paths constructors

There are two paths constructors presented by prefixes !path_win and !path_posix. Their purpose is to compose and return PureWindowsPath and PurePosixPath pathlib instances.

Assume having a file ./config/data.yaml with content

path_win: !path_win ['C:\', Test, files, test_file.txt]
path_posix: !path_posix [/var, log, test.log]

from pyflexcfg import Cfg

print(Cfg.data.path_win)
>> PureWindowsPath('C:/Test/files/test_file.txt')

print(Cfg.data.path_posix)
>> PurePosixPath('/var/log/test.log')

In addition, there is one more path constructor presented with !home_dir prefix. Its purpose to be used as a base for paths originating from User's home directory (OS independent). It returns a PurePath pathlib instance.

Assume having a file ./config/data.yaml with content and logged in as user

path: !home_dir [app, logs]

For Unix OS:

from pyflexcfg import Cfg

print(Cfg.data.path)
>> PurePath('/home/user/app/log/')

For Windows OS:

from pyflexcfg import Cfg

print(Cfg.data.path)
>> PurePath('C:/Users/user/app/log/')