Summary

In this chapter, we explored a number of ways to represent the configuration parameters. Most of these are based on more general serialization techniques that we saw in Chapter 10, 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 recommended 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...