Scruffy. The Janitor.

Scruffy is a framework for taking care of a bunch of boilerplate in Python apps. It handles the loading of configuration files, the loading and management of plugins, and the management of other filesystem resources such as temporary files and directories, log files, etc.

A typical use case for Scruffy is a command-line Python tool with some or all of the following requirements:

• Read a set of configuration defaults
• Read a local configuration file and apply it on top of the defaults
• Allow overriding some configuration options with command line flags or at runtime
• Load a core set of Python-based plugins
• Load a set of user-defined Python-based plugins
• Generate log files whose name, location and other logging settings are based on configuration
• Store application state between runs in a file or database

Scruffy is used by Voltron and Calculon

A standard python setup script is included.

$ python setup.py install

This will install the Scruffy package wherever that happens on your system.

Alternately, Scruffy can be installed with pip from PyPi (where it's called scruffington, because I didn't check for a conflict before I named it).

$ pip install scruffington

Full documentation is hosted at readthedocs

Load a user config file, and apply it on top of a set of defaults loaded from inside the Python package we're currently running from.

thingy.yaml:

some_property:  1
other_property: a thing

thingy.py:

from scruffy import ConfigFile

c = ConfigFile('thingy.yaml', load=True,
    defaults=File('defaults.yaml', parent=PackageDirectory())
)

print("c.some_property == {c.some_property}".format(c=c))
print("c.other_property == {c.other_property}".format(c=c))

Run it:

$ python thingy.py
c.some_property == 1
c.other_property == a thing

Load some plugins.

~/.thingy/plugins/example.py:

from scruffy import Plugin

class ExamplePlugin(Plugin):
    def do_a_thing(self):
        print('{}.{} is doing a thing'.format(__name__, self.__class__.__name__))

thingy.py:

from scruffy import PluginDirectory, PluginRegistry

pd = PluginDirectory('~/.thingy/plugins')
pd.load()

for p in PluginRegistry.plugins:
    print("Initialising plugin {}".format(p))
    p().do_a_thing()

Run it:

$ python thingy.py
Initialising plugin <class 'example.ExamplePlugin'>
example.ExamplePlugin is doing a thing

Scruffy's LogFile class will do some configuration of Python's logging module.

log.py:

import logging
from scruffy import LogFile

log = logging.getLogger('main')
log.setLevel(logging.INFO)
LogFile('/tmp/thingy.log', logger='main').configure()

log.info('Hello from log.py')

/tmp/thingy.log:

Hello from log.py

Scruffy's Environment class ties all the other stuff together. The other classes can be instantiated as named children of an Environment, which will load any Config objects, apply the configs to the other objects, and then prepare the other objects.

~/.thingy/config:

log_dir:    /tmp/logs
log_file:   thingy.log

env.py:

from scruffy import *

e = Environment(
    main_dir=Directory('~/.thingy', create=True,
        config=ConfigFile('config', defaults=File('defaults.yaml', parent=PackageDirectory())),
        lock=LockFile('lock')
        user_plugins=PluginDirectory('plugins')
    ),
    log_dir=Directory('{config:log_dir}', create=True
        LogFile('{config:log_file}', logger='main')
    ),
    pkg_plugins=PluginDirectory('plugins', parent=PackageDirectory())
)

See LICENSE file. If you use this and don't hate it, buy me a beer at a conference some time.

Props to richo. Flat duck pride.