Summary
We looked at a number of ways to represent the configuration parameters. Most of these are based on more general serialization techniques that we saw in Chapter 9, Serializing and Saving – JSON, YAML, Pickle, CSV, and XML. The configparser module provides an additional format that's comfortable for some users.
The key feature of a configuration file is that the content can be easily edited by a human. For this reason, pickle files aren't suggested as a good representation.
Design considerations and trade-offs
Configuration files can simplify running application programs or starting servers. This can put all the relevant parameters in one easy-to-read and easy-to-modify file. We can put these files under the configuration control, track change history, and generally use them to improve the software's quality.
We have several alternative formats for these files, all of which are reasonably human friendly to edit. They vary in how easy they are to parse and any limitations on the Python...
