AppConfig module

The environment between your development and production system will almost certainly mean a different database configuration, different mail servers and possibly other differences.

Web2py intends the private directory for storing information which is not replicated in a typical deployment to production (although you need to take care to make sure that you are not deploying that directory).

The contributed module AppConfig allows the private directory to store a simple configuration text file to define settings which vary between dev and production, such as database connections. By default it is a text file which is pythonesque, but json is also supported.

The welcome app now uses this module in db.py to read configuration from a file in the application’s private directory. By default the path to this file is

private/appconfig.ini

By default, appconfig.ini allows you to define a database connection and smtp configuration. When the application is stable, the module can be set to cached mode to reduce overhead.

from gluon.contrib.appconfig import AppConfig
...
myconf = AppConfig(reload=False)

Applications created in a recent version of web2py default to having the database connection defined with AppConfig.

The values in app_config.ini are fetched and cast from a string value by like so:

myconf = AppConfig()
...
a_config_value = myconf.take('example_section.example_key', cast=int)

Because the casting occurs from a string, and non empty strings cast to True, the safest way to represent a Boolean False is with an empty string:

[example_section]
example_key =