Using the Library

Quickstart

The following example is not typical of how you’d use pitstop in practice, but gives you a feel for the API:

from pitstop.backends.base import DictBackend
from pitstop.strategies import strategy_factory

# The metaconfig defines your actual configuration backends and
# schema. In this example, we're using an in-memory DictBackend so
# we don't need to define any backends.
metaconfig = {
    'strategy': {'version': 1},
    'schema': {
        'frobnicator_level': {'type': 'integer', 'default': 42},
        'frobnicator_name': {'type': 'string'},
    }
}

# A configuration fragment, akin to one that might be deserialized
# from a popular configuration format (JSON, YAML, INI, whatever)
config = {'frobnicator_name': 'foobar'}

# Backends require a name and priority at minimum, more on that
# later. ``obj`` is a required parameter of the DictBackend, it's
# the configuration dictionary itself.
backend = DictBackend(name='dict', priority=1, obj=config)

# Create a strategy from our metaconfig, and add the DictBackend.
# Backends can be added and removed ad-hoc within your application
# or library at any time.
strategy = strategy_factory(metaconfig)
strategy.backends.add(backend)

# Resolving is what aggregates every backend within the strategy into
# a single, JSON serializable mapping.
print(strategy.resolve())
# -> {'frobnicator_level': 42, 'frobnicator_name': 'foobar'}

# You can also get keys individually.
print(strategy.get('frobnicator_name'))
# -> 'foobar'

# You can choose to override defaults, or use the schema default
print(strategy.get('frobnicator_level', default=24))
# -> 24
print(strategy.get('frobnicator_level'))
# -> 42