Standard ZConfig Datatypes

There are a number of data types which can be identified using the datatype attribute on key , sectiontype, and schema elements. Applications may extend the set of datatypes by calling the register() method of the data type registry being used or by using Python dotted-names to refer to conversion routines defined in code.

The following data types are provided by the default type registry.

basic-key

The default data type for a key in a ZConfig configuration file. The result of conversion is always lower-case, and matches the regular expression [a-z][-._a-z0-9]*.

boolean

Convert a human-friendly string to a boolean value. The names yes, on, and true convert to True, while no, off, and false convert to False. Comparisons are case-insensitive. All other input strings are disallowed.

byte-size

A specification of a size, with byte multiplier suffixes (for example, 128MB). Suffixes are case insensitive and may be KB, MB, or GB

dotted-name

A string consisting of one or more identifier values separated by periods (.).

dotted-suffix

A string consisting of one or more identifier values separated by periods (.), possibly prefixed by a period. This can be used to indicate a dotted name that may be specified relative to some base dotted name.

existing-dirpath

Validates that the directory portion of a pathname exists. For example, if the value provided is ‘/foo/bar’, ‘/foo’ must be an existing directory. No conversion is performed.

existing-directory

Validates that a directory by the given name exists on the local filesystem. No conversion is performed.

existing-file

Validates that a file by the given name exists. No conversion is performed.

existing-path

Validates that a path (file, directory, or symlink) by the given name exists on the local filesystem. No conversion is performed.

float

A Python float. Inf, -Inf, and NaN are not allowed.

identifier

Any valid Python identifier.

inet-address

An Internet address expressed as a (hostname, port) pair. If only the port is specified, the default host will be returned for hostname. The default host is localhost on Windows and the empty string on all other platforms. If the port is omitted, None will be returned for port. IPv6 addresses can be specified in colon-separated notation; if both host and port need to be specified, the bracketed form ([addr]:port) must be used.

inet-binding-address

An Internet address expressed as a (hostname, port) pair. The address is suitable for binding a socket. If only the port is specified, the default host will be returned for hostname. The default host is the empty string on all platforms. If the port is omitted, None will be returned for port.

inet-connection-address

An Internet address expressed as a (hostname, port) pair. The address is suitable for connecting a socket to a server. If only the port is specified, '127.0.0.1' will be returned for hostname. If the port is omitted, None will be returned for port.

integer

Convert a value to an integer. This will be a Python int if the value is in the range allowed by :class`int`, otherwise a Python long is returned.

ipaddr-or-hostname

Validates a valid IP address or hostname. If the first character is a digit, the value is assumed to be an IP address. If the first character is not a digit, the value is assumed to be a hostname. Strings containing colons are considered IPv6 address. Hostnames are converted to lower case.

locale

Any valid locale specifier accepted by the available locale.setlocale() function. Be aware that only the 'C' locale is supported on some platforms.

null

No conversion is performed; the value passed in is the value returned. This is the default data type for section values.

port-number

Returns a valid port number as an integer. Validity does not imply that any particular use may be made of the port, however. For example, port number lower than 1024 generally cannot be bound by non-root users.

socket-address

An address for a socket. The converted value is an object providing two attributes. family specifies the address family (socket.AF_INET or socket.AF_UNIX), with None instead of AF_UNIX on platforms that don’t support it. The address attribute will be the address that should be passed to the socket’s bind() method. If the family is AF_UNIX, the specific address will be a pathname; if the family is AF_INET, the second part will be the result of the inet-address conversion.

string

Returns the input value as a string. If the source is a Unicode string, this implies that it will be checked to be simple 7-bit ASCII. This is the default data type for values in configuration files.

time-interval

A specification of a time interval in seconds, with multiplier suffixes (for example, 12h). Suffixes are case insensitive and may be s (seconds), m (minutes), h (hours), or d (days).

timedelta

Similar to the time-interval, this data type returns a Python datetime.timedelta object instead of a float. The set of suffixes recognized by timedelta are: w (weeks), d (days), h (hours), m (minutes), s (seconds). Values may be floats, for example: 4w 2.5d 7h 12m 0.001s.