Properties file in python (similar to Java Properties)

Given the following format (.properties or .ini):

propertyName1=propertyValue1
propertyName2=propertyValue2
...
propertyNameN=propertyValueN

For Java there is the Properties class that offers functionality to parse / interact with the above format.

Is there something similar in python's standard library (2.x) ?

If not, what other alternatives do I have ?

I was able to get this to work with ConfigParser, no one showed any examples on how to do this, so here is a simple python reader of a property file and example of the property file. Note that the extension is still .properties, but I had to add a section header similar to what you see in .ini files... a bit of a bastardization, but it works.

The python file: PythonPropertyReader.py

#!/usr/bin/python    
import ConfigParser
config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()
config.read('ConfigFile.properties')

print config.get('DatabaseSection', 'database.dbname');

The property file: ConfigFile.properties

[DatabaseSection]
database.dbname=unitTest
database.user=root
database.password=

For more functionality, read: https://docs.python.org/2/library/configparser.html

For .ini files there is the configparser module that provides a format compatible with .ini files.

Anyway there's nothing available for parsing complete .properties files, when I have to do that I simply use jython (I'm talking about scripting).

I know that this is a very old question, but I need it just now and I decided to implement my own solution, a pure python solution, that covers most uses cases (not all):

def load_properties(filepath, sep='=', comment_char='#'):
    """
    Read the file passed as parameter as a properties file.
    """
    props = {}
    with open(filepath, "rt") as f:
        for line in f:
            l = line.strip()
            if l and not l.startswith(comment_char):
                key_value = l.split(sep)
		        key = key_value[0].strip()
		        value = sep.join(key_value[1:]).strip().strip('"') 
                props[key] = value 
    return props

You can change the sep to ':' to parse files with format:

key : value

The code parses correctly lines like:

url = "http://my-host.com"
name = Paul = Pablo
# This comment line will be ignored

You'll get a dict with:

{"url": "http://my-host.com", "name": "Paul = Pablo" }

A java properties file is often valid python code as well. You could rename your myconfig.properties file to myconfig.py. Then just import your file, like this

import myconfig

and access the properties directly

print myconfig.propertyName1

If you have an option of file formats I suggest using .ini and Python's ConfigParser as mentioned. If you need compatibility with Java .properties files I have written a library for it called jprops. We were using pyjavaproperties, but after encountering various limitations I ended up implementing my own. It has full support for the .properties format, including unicode support and better support for escape sequences. Jprops can also parse any file-like object while pyjavaproperties only works with real files on disk.

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}

This is not exactly properties but Python does have a nice library for parsing configuration files. Also see this recipe: A python replacement for java.util.Properties.

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'

Here is link to my project: https://sourceforge.net/projects/pyproperties/. It is a library with methods for working with *.properties files for Python 3.x.

But it is not based on java.util.Properties

This is a one-to-one replacement of java.util.Propeties

From the doc:

  def __parse(self, lines):
        """ Parse a list of lines and create
        an internal property dictionary """

        # Every line in the file must consist of either a comment
        # or a key-value pair. A key-value pair is a line consisting
        # of a key which is a combination of non-white space characters
        # The separator character between key-value pairs is a '=',
        # ':' or a whitespace character not including the newline.
        # If the '=' or ':' characters are found, in the line, even
        # keys containing whitespace chars are allowed.

        # A line with only a key according to the rules above is also
        # fine. In such case, the value is considered as the empty string.
        # In order to include characters '=' or ':' in a key or value,
        # they have to be properly escaped using the backslash character.

        # Some examples of valid key-value pairs:
        #
        # key     value
        # key=value
        # key:value
        # key     value1,value2,value3
        # key     value1,value2,value3 \
        #         value4, value5
        # key
        # This key= this value
        # key = value1 value2 value3
        
        # Any line that starts with a '#' is considerered a comment
        # and skipped. Also any trailing or preceding whitespaces
        # are removed from the key/value.
        
        # This is a line parser. It parses the
        # contents like by line.

If you need to read all values from a section in properties file in a simple manner:

Your config.properties file layout :

[SECTION_NAME]  
key1 = value1  
key2 = value2  

You code:

   import configparser

   config = configparser.RawConfigParser()
   config.read('path_to_config.properties file')
    
   details_dict = dict(config.items('SECTION_NAME'))

This will give you a dictionary where keys are same as in config file and their corresponding values.

details_dict is :

{'key1':'value1', 'key2':'value2'}

Now to get key1's value : details_dict['key1']

Putting it all in a method which reads that section from config file only once(the first time the method is called during a program run).

def get_config_dict():
    if not hasattr(get_config_dict, 'config_dict'):
        get_config_dict.config_dict = dict(config.items('SECTION_NAME'))
    return get_config_dict.config_dict

Now call the above function and get the required key's value :

config_details = get_config_dict()
key_1_value = config_details['key1'] 

---

---

Extending the approach mentioned above, reading section by section automatically and then accessing by section name followed by key name.

def get_config_section():
    if not hasattr(get_config_section, 'section_dict'):
        get_config_section.section_dict = dict()

        for section in config.sections():
            get_config_section.section_dict[section] = 
                             dict(config.items(section))

    return get_config_section.section_dict

To access:

config_dict = get_config_section()

port = config_dict['DB']['port'] 

(here 'DB' is a section name in config file and 'port' is a key under section 'DB'.)

You can use a file-like object in ConfigParser.RawConfigParser.readfp defined here -> https://docs.python.org/2/library/configparser.html#ConfigParser.RawConfigParser.readfp

Define a class that overrides readline that adds a section name before the actual contents of your properties file.

I've packaged it into the class that returns a dict of all the properties defined.

import ConfigParser

class PropertiesReader(object):

    def __init__(self, properties_file_name):
        self.name = properties_file_name
        self.main_section = 'main'

        # Add dummy section on top
        self.lines = [ '[%s]\n' % self.main_section ]
         
        with open(properties_file_name) as f:
            self.lines.extend(f.readlines())

        # This makes sure that iterator in readfp stops
        self.lines.append('')

    def readline(self):
        return self.lines.pop(0)

    def read_properties(self):
        config = ConfigParser.RawConfigParser()

        # Without next line the property names will be lowercased
        config.optionxform = str

        config.readfp(self)
        return dict(config.items(self.main_section))

if __name__ == '__main__':
    print PropertiesReader('/path/to/file.properties').read_properties()

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

This is what I'm doing in my project: I just create another .py file called properties.py which includes all common variables/properties I used in the project, and in any file need to refer to these variables, put

from properties import *(or anything you need)

Used this method to keep svn peace when I was changing dev locations frequently and some common variables were quite relative to local environment. Works fine for me but not sure this method would be suggested for formal dev environment etc.

I have created a python module that is almost similar to the Properties class of Java ( Actually it is like the PropertyPlaceholderConfigurer in spring which lets you use ${variable-reference} to refer to already defined property )

EDIT : You may install this package by running the command(currently tested for python 3).
pip install property

The project is hosted on GitHub

Example : ( Detailed documentation can be found here )

Let's say you have the following properties defined in my_file.properties file

foo = I am awesome
bar = ${chocolate}-bar
chocolate = fudge

Code to load the above properties

from properties.p import Property

prop = Property()
# Simply load it into a dictionary
dic_prop = prop.load_property_files('my_file.properties')

import json
f=open('test.json')
x=json.load(f)
f.close()
print(x)

Contents of test.json: {"host": "127.0.0.1", "user": "jms"}

Below 2 lines of code shows how to use Python List Comprehension to load 'java style' property file.

split_properties=[line.split("=") for line in open('/<path_to_property_file>)]
properties={key: value for key,value in split_properties }

Please have a look at below post for details https://ilearnonlinesite.wordpress.com/2017/07/24/reading-property-file-in-python-using-comprehension-and-generators/

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"

I did this using ConfigParser as follows. The code assumes that there is a file called config.prop in the same directory where BaseTest is placed:

config.prop

[CredentialSection]
app.name=MyAppName

BaseTest.py:

import unittest
import ConfigParser

class BaseTest(unittest.TestCase):
    def setUp(self):
        __SECTION = 'CredentialSection'
        config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
        config.readfp(open('config.prop'))
        self.__app_name = config.get(__SECTION, 'app.name')
    
    def test1(self):
        print self.__app_name % This should print: MyAppName

This is what i had written to parse file and set it as env variables which skips comments and non key value lines added switches to specify hg:d

• -h or --help print usage summary

• -c Specify char that identifies comment

• -s Separator between key and value in prop file

• and specify properties file that needs to be parsed eg : python EnvParamSet.py -c # -s = env.properties

   import pipes
   import sys , getopt
   import os.path
  
   class Parsing :
  
   		def __init__(self , seprator , commentChar , propFile):
   		self.seprator = seprator
   		self.commentChar = commentChar
   		self.propFile  = propFile
  
   	def  parseProp(self):
   		prop = open(self.propFile,'rU')
   		for line in prop :
   			if line.startswith(self.commentChar)==False and  line.find(self.seprator) != -1  :
   				keyValue = line.split(self.seprator)
   				key =  keyValue[0].strip() 
   				value = keyValue[1].strip() 
   						print("export  %s=%s" % (str (key),pipes.quote(str(value))))
  
  
  
  
   class EnvParamSet:
  
   	def main (argv):
   	
   		seprator = '='
   		comment =  '#'
   		
   		if len(argv)  is 0:
   			print "Please Specify properties file to be parsed "
   			sys.exit()
   		propFile=argv[-1] 
   		
   		
   		try :
   			opts, args = getopt.getopt(argv, "hs:c:f:", ["help", "seprator=","comment=", "file="])
   		except getopt.GetoptError,e:
   			print str(e)
   			print " possible  arguments  -s <key value sperator > -c < comment char >    <file> \n  Try -h or --help "
   			sys.exit(2)
   			
   		
   		if os.path.isfile(args[0])==False:
   			print "File doesnt exist "
   			sys.exit()
   			
   		
   		for opt , arg  in opts :
   			if opt in ("-h" , "--help"):
   				print " hg:d  \n -h or --help print usage summary \n -c Specify char that idetifes comment  \n -s Sperator between key and value in prop file \n  specify file  "
   				sys.exit()
   			elif opt in ("-s" , "--seprator"):
   				seprator = arg 
   			elif opt in ("-c"  , "--comment"):
   				comment  = arg
  
   		p = Parsing( seprator, comment , propFile)
   		p.parseProp()
   		
   	if __name__ == "__main__":
   			main(sys.argv[1:])
  

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