Inspecting configurations

Field access

Iterating through a Config instance yields the names of the Field attributes it contains. The Config class also supports many dictionary-like methods: keys, items, iterkeys, iteritems, and itervalues.

History

The Config.history attribute contains the history of all changes to the Config instance’s fields. Each Field instance also has a history. The Config.formatHistory method displays the history of a given Field in a more readable format.

Docstrings

Each Field instance is required to have a doc string that describes the contents of the field. Doc strings can be verbose and should give users of the Config object a good understanding of what the field is and how it will be interpreted and used. A doc string should also be provided for the class as a whole.

You can use the built-in help function or pydoc command to inspect a Config instance’s doc strings as well as those of its Field attributes.