Properties file in python (similar to Java Properties)

if you don't have multi line properties and a very simple need, a few lines of code can solve it for you:

File t.properties:

a=b
c=d
e=f

Python code:

with open("t.properties") as f:
    l = [line.split("=") for line in f.readlines()]
    d = {key.strip(): value.strip() for key, value in l}

i have used this, this library is very useful

from pyjavaproperties import Properties
p = Properties()
p.load(open('test.properties'))
p.list()
print(p)
print(p.items())
print(p['name3'])
p['name3'] = 'changed = value'

create a dictionary in your python module and store everything into it and access it, for example:

dict = {
       'portalPath' : 'www.xyx.com',
       'elementID': 'submit'}

Now to access it you can simply do:

submitButton = driver.find_element_by_id(dict['elementID'])

My Java ini files didn't have section headers and I wanted a dict as a result. So i simply injected an "[ini]" section and let the default config library do its job.

Take a version.ini fie of the eclipse IDE .metadata directory as an example:

#Mon Dec 20 07:35:29 CET 2021
org.eclipse.core.runtime=2
org.eclipse.platform=4.19.0.v20210303-1800

# 'injected' ini section
[ini]
#Mon Dec 20 07:35:29 CET 2021
org.eclipse.core.runtime=2
org.eclipse.platform=4.19.0.v20210303-1800

The result is converted to a dict:

from configparser import ConfigParser

@staticmethod
    def readPropertyFile(path):
        # https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3595363/properties-file-in-python-similar-to-java-properties
        config = ConfigParser()
        s_config= open(path, 'r').read()
        s_config="[ini]\n%s" % s_config
        # https://stackoverflow.com/a/36841741/1497139
        config.read_string(s_config)
        items=config.items('ini')
        itemDict={}
        for key,value in items:
            itemDict[key]=value
        return itemDict

you can use parameter "fromfile_prefix_chars" with argparse to read from config file as below---

temp.py

parser = argparse.ArgumentParser(fromfile_prefix_chars='#')
parser.add_argument('--a')
parser.add_argument('--b')
args = parser.parse_args()
print(args.a)
print(args.b)

config file

--a
hello
--b
hello dear

Run command

python temp.py "#config"

Lightbend has released the Typesafe Config library, which parses properties files and also some JSON-based extensions. Lightbend's library is only for the JVM, but it seems to be widely adopted and there are now ports in many languages, including Python: https://github.com/chimpler/pyhocon

You can use the following function, which is the modified code of @mvallebr. It respects the properties file comments, ignores empty new lines, and allows retrieving a single key value.

def getProperties(propertiesFile ="/home/memin/.config/customMemin/conf.properties", key=''):
    """
    Reads a .properties file and returns the key value pairs as dictionary.
    if key value is specified, then it will return its value alone.
    """
    with open(propertiesFile) as f:
        l = [line.strip().split("=") for line in f.readlines() if not line.startswith('#') and line.strip()]
        d = {key.strip(): value.strip() for key, value in l}

        if key:
            return d[key]
        else:
            return d

this works for me.

from pyjavaproperties import Properties
p = Properties()
p.load(open('test.properties'))
p.list()
print p
print p.items()
print p['name3']

I followed configparser approach and it worked quite well for me. Created one PropertyReader file and used config parser there to ready property to corresponding to each section.

**Used Python 2.7

Content of PropertyReader.py file:

#!/usr/bin/python
import ConfigParser

class PropertyReader:

def readProperty(self, strSection, strKey):
    config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
    config.read('ConfigFile.properties')
    strValue = config.get(strSection,strKey);
    print "Value captured for "+strKey+" :"+strValue
    return strValue

Content of read schema file:

from PropertyReader import *

class ReadSchema:

print PropertyReader().readProperty('source1_section','source_name1')
print PropertyReader().readProperty('source2_section','sn2_sc1_tb')

Content of .properties file:

[source1_section]
source_name1:module1
sn1_schema:schema1,schema2,schema3
sn1_sc1_tb:employee,department,location
sn1_sc2_tb:student,college,country

[source2_section]
source_name1:module2
sn2_schema:schema4,schema5,schema6
sn2_sc1_tb:employee,department,location
sn2_sc2_tb:student,college,country