What's the official way of storing settings for Python programs?

Depends on the predominant intended audience.

If it is programmers who change the file anyway, just use python files like settings.py

If it is end users then, think about ini files.

As many have said, there is no "offical" way. There are, however, many choices. There was a talk at PyCon this year about many of the available options.

Don't know if this can be considered "official", but it is in standard library: 14.2. ConfigParser — Configuration file parser.

This is, obviously, not an universal solution, though. Just use whatever feels most appropriate to the task, without any necessary complexity (and — especially — Turing-completeness! Think about automatic or GUI configurators).

Just one more option, PyQt. Qt has a platform independent way of storing settings with the QSettings class. Underneath the hood, on windows it uses the registry and in linux it stores the settings in a hidden conf file. QSettings works very well and is pretty seemless.

I am not sure that there is an 'official' way (it is not mentioned in the Zen of Python :) )- I tend to use the Config Parser module myself and I think that you will find that pretty common. I prefer that over the python file approach because you can write back to it and dynamically reload if you want.

It depends largely on how complicated your configuration is. If you're doing a simple key-value mapping and you want the capability to edit the settings with a text editor, I think ConfigParser is the way to go.

If your settings are complicated and include lists and nested data structures, I'd use XML or JSON and create a configuration editor.

For really complicated things where the end user isn't expected to change the settings much, or is more trusted, just create a set of Python classes and evaluate a Python script to get the configuration.

One of the easiest ways which is use is using the json module. Save the file in config.json with the details as shown below.

Saving data in the json file:

{

    "john"  : {
        "number" : "948075049" , 
        "password":"thisisit" 
    }    
}

Reading from json file:

import json

#open the config.json file 

with open('config.json') as f:
    mydata = json.load(f) ; 

#Now mydata is a python dictionary 

print("username is " , mydata.get('john').get('number') , " password is " , mydata.get('john').get('password')) ;

It is more of convenience. There is no official way per say. But using XML files would make sense as they can be manipulated by various other applications/libraries.

Not an official one but this way works well for all my Python projects.

pip install python-settings

Docs here: https://github.com/charlsagente/python-settings

You need a settings.py file with all your defined constants like:

# settings.py

DATABASE_HOST = '10.0.0.1'

Then you need to either set an env variable (export SETTINGS_MODULE=settings) or manually calling the configure method:

# something_else.py

from python_settings import settings
from . import settings as my_local_settings

settings.configure(my_local_settings) # configure() receives a python module

The utility also supports Lazy initialization for heavy to load objects, so when you run your python project it loads faster since it only evaluates the settings variable when its needed

# settings.py

from python_settings import LazySetting
from my_awesome_library import HeavyInitializationClass # Heavy to initialize object

LAZY_INITIALIZATION = LazySetting(HeavyInitializationClass, "127.0.0.1:4222") 
# LazySetting(Class, *args, **kwargs)

Just configure once and now call your variables where is needed:

# my_awesome_file.py

from python_settings import settings 

print(settings.DATABASE_HOST) # Will print '10.0.0.1'

why would Guido blessed something that is out of his scope? No there is nothing particular blessed.