Python: Configparser - escape newlines?

Question

Is there a way to escape newlines using ConfigParser?

There is this option --addons-path in config where you can provide multiple paths for addons, but paths are long and there are many of paths so writing everything in one line, looks really bad. So I thought to put addons paths in multiple lines, but ConfigParser does not allow it. I get this error:

Starting odoo-server: Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp-server", line 5, in <module>
    openerp.cli.main()
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/cli/__init__.py", line 68, in main
    o.run(args)
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/cli/server.py", line 180, in run
    main(args)
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/cli/server.py", line 140, in main
    openerp.tools.config.parse_config(args)
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/tools/config.py", line 358, in parse_config
    self._parse_config(args)
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/tools/config.py", line 403, in _parse_config
    self.load()
  File "/home/oerp/openerp80/odoo/openerp/tools/config.py", line 605, in load
    p.read([self.rcfile])
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 305, in read
    self._read(fp, filename)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.7/ConfigParser.py", line 546, in _read
    raise e
ConfigParser.ParsingError: File contains parsing errors: /etc/odoo-server.conf
    [line  3]: '/home/oerp/openerp80/addons,\n'
    [line  4]: '/home/oerp/openerp80/community-addons\n'

Is there a way to write paths in multiple lines, but make ConfigParser treat it as one line (ignoring newlines)?

Update

Config file sample (works):

someparam = blabla
; this is part I want to modify
addons_path = /some/dir1,/some/dir2,/some/dir3
; some other params

Config file I want to look like, but it does not work:

someparam = blabla
; this is part I want to modify
addons_path = /some/dir1,
/some/dir2,
/some/dir3
; some other params

PS Indentation can be different as long as I could put paths in multiple lines, so it would not just go into one long line.

Answer 1

The answers before were a step in the right direction.

In Odoo 9 it works like this (You need to indent the lines and keep the commas but it's still possible to have multiple paths in one line.):

[options]
addons_path =
    /some/dir1,
    /some/dir2,/some/dir3,
    /some/dir4,
    /some/dir5

To achieve this in an older version you can modify the odoo/openerp/tools/config.py

Search this line

os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(os.path.expandvars(x)))

and replace it with this

os.path.abspath(os.path.expanduser(os.path.expandvars(x.strip())))

Answer 2

If you indent the lines that add information to your addons_path parameter, they will be parsed as one string. Complete example, no commas needed between values (I am using StringIO for better demostration, in most cases you will have a file object):

import ConfigParser
import StringIO

config_as_string = '''
[something]
someparam = blabla
; this is part I want to modify
addons_path = 
  /some/dir1
  /some/dir2
  /some/dir3
; some other params
'''

config_as_file = StringIO.StringIO(config_as_string)

config = ConfigParser.ConfigParser()
config.readfp(config_as_file)

addons_path = config.get('something', 'addons_path')

Then the addons_path is a single string:

>>> print addons_path

/some/dir1
/some/dir2
/some/dir3

And as list:

>>> addons_path.split()
['/some/dir1', '/some/dir2', '/some/dir3']

Do these examples help? The key is indentation, I guess.

Answer 3

My suggestion would be to store things in a map if a map is what you're storing (or a list in your case) and after fetching just use a parser to read the values as they are defined

Like this:

[Section]
map1:  {key: value,
          key: value,
          .
          .
          .
}
list1:  [value1,
          value2,
          .
          .
          .
]

If You want to just make ConfigParser read multiple lines as if they were in a single line that refer to this post :

It basicaly states that:

The ConfigParser _read() method's .doc string says:

Continuations are represented by an embedded newline then leading whitespace.

Meaning that Your solution would be doing something like this:

[SECTION]
param=
  item1
  item2
  item3

NOTE: This has not been tested and Is a re quote from another post. I'll remove this if someone confirms this works