Re: [pygame] cross-platform prefs storage?

[Jon Doda <jdoda@sympatico.ca>]

Jack Nutting wrote:
> This is not strictly pygame-related, but since most pygame projects 
> support multiple platforms to a certain degree, some of you have 
> probably encountered this issue before...
>
> What I'm thinking about is storage of small amounts of user-specific 
> data, for example preferences for video settings and control settings, 
> or storage of a high-score table.  Under Unix you'd usually put 
> everything in a ~/.myprogram file/dir, on Mac OS X you can either do 
> that or use  NSUserDefaults.  I guess I have two questions:
>
> - Where do Windows programs ususally store these things?  The registry 
> (blah)?  A .ini file in the launch directory (double blah)?
>
> - Has anyone written/seen a python wrapper for this type of prefs 
> storage that will take account of the platform and do the right thing?
>
> This seems like such a common need, it seems pointless to reinvent the 
> wheel.
Windows would normally store these things in "C:\Documents and 
Settings\$USER\Application Data\$APP".  One (totally untested) way to 
handle this would be something like:

import os

def config_file(app_name, file_name, mode)
    """Return a configuration file named file_name, in the correct
    location for this platform."""

    home_dir = os.path.expanduser('~')

    if os.name == 'nt':	
        config_location = os.path.join(home_dir, 'Application Data',
            app_name, file_name)
    else:
        config_location = os.path.join(home_dir, '.' + app_name,
            file_name)

    return file(config_location, mode)