How to retrieve key value pairs in python

[sa537]

Hi,
Iam new to python.

I have a config file as shown below in the same order .I need to retrieve key value pairs from config file and will use those values in my script


# Name and details
(
{ group => 'abc',
host => 'pqr.com',
user => 'anonymous',
src => '/var/tmp',
dest => '/tmp',
},
{group => 'abc',
host =>'pqr.com',
user => 'anonymous',
src => '/tmp'
dest => '/var/tmp'
},
{ group => 'pqr',
host =>'abc.com',
user => 'xyz',
src => '/home/pp',
dest => '/var/tmp',
},
{ group => 'xyz',
host =>'p.com',
user => 'x',
src => '/home/',
dest => '/tmp',
}
)

Each {
},is considerd as one block..Group,user,host are unique as well as repeated.

I have to read and parse the config file and display key and value pair.Pls help.

Key : group,Value : 'abc'(say)
key : host ,Value :'pqr.com'
Key : user, Value :'anonymous'
Key : src,Value :'/var/tmp',
key : dest,Value : '/tmp'


Thank you,

[bvdet]

Your data is misconfigured because of some missing commas. Assuming you add in the missing commas, a list of dictionaries could be compiled. You can use string method index, and string slicing in a while loop to compile the list. Enclose the index call in a try/except block, because index will raise a ValueError if no substring is found. Example where config is the full configuration string read from the file:

idx = 0
dictList = []
while True:
    try:
        start = config.index("{", idx)
        end = config.index("}", start+1)
        slice = config[start+1:end-1]
        sliceList = [s.strip() for s in slice.split(",") if s.strip()]
        dd = {}
        for item in sliceList:
            key, value = [s.strip() for s in item.split("=>")]
            dd[key] = value
        dictList.append(dd)
        idx = end+1
    except ValueError, e:
        break

Would it not be better to use XML for your configuration data?

[sa537]

Thanks for your respons.It helped me a lot.No i cant use any xml file..
I did in perl as below (sample code)

"eval /@temp" =@configfile
for $job in @temp
  for $jobdef in %$job
    $jobdef -> {src} = '/tmp'
    $jobdef -> {user} = x

Is there any way to do similar to this in python?

Thank you in advance

[bvdet]

Since I don't know Perl, I can't help with "similar" code. I mentioned XML because your data would be ideal for it, and you can use an XML parser to get the data.

[sa537]

Thanks for ur response again..Well,its a CSV file...I cant put the data in XML...Tried ur code,worked something well...Hw to print values associated with user,source,group,host,dest... pertaining to a single block {
}
...?