Exclude DEFAULT properties when reading with configparser

Python Help
1

I am using Python 3.13.3.

I have configurations like:

[DEFAULT]
machines = machine1 machine2 machine3
foo = bar

[deployment]

	[machine1]
	tomcat = /home/user/install/tomcat
	dcpc = /home/user/install/dcpc


	[machine2]
	pe = /home/user/install/server
	dbloader = /home/user/install/server
	reqgen = /home/user/install/server


	[machine2]
	dcpc = /home/user/install/dcpc
	dcpc2 = /home/user/install/dcpc2
	dcpc3 = /home/user/install/dcpc3

And I do not know in advance what will be there exactly. I want then to go through each of those machines, connect to it and check what there is in those directories.

So I have this method:

    def get_modules_in_machines(self):
        modules_in_machines = list()

        machines = self.config["DEFAULT"]["machines"].split()
        for machine in machines:
            logger.debug(f"Reading config for {machine}")
            modules_in_machine = dict(self.config.items(machine, raw=True))
            logger.debug(f"Config is: {modules_in_machine}")

            modules_in_machines.append((machine, modules_in_machine))

        return modules_in_machines

That is NOT supposed to return foo: bar, but it does return it along the contents of the specified section; why? I thought the raw=True had to do exactly that: skip values in DEFAULT section.

Thank you very much for your help.

2

raw=True means that no interpolations happen, not that no values from DEFAULT are used.

I am not that familiar with configparser, but reading the docs there doesn’t appear to be a simple way to get only the values in the section ignoring DEFAULT.

Your best bet is to either not provide a default section (you seem to be using it slightly incorrectly anyway; maybe you want an unnamed section instead?) or to parse the file as if it didn’t have a default section and apply it manually if needed by setting the constructor argument to something that isn’t in the file.

3

OK. Then ChatGPT led me the wrong way :s

Thank you very much for the clarification. I think I will go with the renaming of the section.

You said I am using it wrong, could you hint me at what it is meant for? In what case does it make sense to use it?

4

DEFAULT is for if you have default values that should apply for all sections. E.g. in your example if you want to have a default user_name that is the same on most machines machine1, machine2, machine3, … The default section then allows you to not repeat the value unless it’s different on this one machine.

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