How to read a config file with Python's configparser?

Question

I'm working on reading an external config file in Python(3.7) using the module configparser .

Here is my sample configuration file config.ini

[ABC]
ch0 = "C:/Users/utility/ABC-ch0.txt"
ch1 = "C:/Users/utility/ABC-ch1.txt"

[settings]
script = "C:/Users/OneDrive/utility/xxxx.exe"
settings = "C:/Users/OneDrive/xxxxxxConfig.xml"

Here is the sample code I tried:

import configparser
config = configparser.ConfigParser()

config.read('config.ini')
ch0 = config.get('ABC','ch0')
print(ch0)

And here is the error code I am getting, not sure what I am doing wrong:

NoSectionError: No section: 'ABC'

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Your code is absolutely fine.

This line:

config.read('config.ini')

tries to read the file from the same directory as the.py file you're running. So you have 3 options:

1. move the config.ini file to be next to the.py file
2. use a correct relative path when reading the file
3. use an absolutely path when reading the file [absolutely not recommended (for portability reasons)]

Answer 2

Looks like the issue is not finding config.ini in the correct location, you can avoid that by doing os.getcwd .

import configparser
import os
config = configparser.ConfigParser()

#Get the absolute path of ini file by doing os.getcwd() and joining it to config.ini
ini_path = os.path.join(os.getcwd(),'config.ini')
config.read(ini_path)
ch0 = config.get('ABC','ch0')
print(ch0)
#"C:/Users/utility/ABC-ch0.txt"