Working with Yaml and Jinja2 in Python3

YAML

YAML is a human friendly data serialization standard, especially for configuration files. Its simple to read and use.

Here is an example:

---
# A list of tasty fruits
fruits:
    - Apple
    - Orange
    - Strawberry
    - Mango

btw the latest version of yaml is: v1.2.

PyYAML

Working with yaml files in python is really easy. The python module: PyYAML must be installed in the system.

In an archlinux box, the system-wide installation of this python package, can be done by typing:

$ sudo pacman -S --noconfirm python-yaml

Python3 - Yaml Example

Save the above yaml example to a file, eg. fruits.yml
Open the Python3 Interpreter and write:

$ python3.6
Python 3.6.4 (default, Jan  5 2018, 02:35:40)
[GCC 7.2.1 20171224] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.

>>> from yaml import load 

>>> print(load(open("fruits.yml")))
{'fruits': ['Apple', 'Orange', 'Strawberry', 'Mango']}
>>>

an alternative way is to write the above commands to a python file:

from yaml import load
print(load(open("fruits.yml")))

and run it from the console:

$ python3 test.py
{'fruits': ['Apple', 'Orange', 'Strawberry', 'Mango']}

Instead of print we can use yaml dump:

eg.

import yaml

yaml.dump(yaml.load(open("fruits.yml")))
'fruits: [Apple, Orange, Strawberry, Mango]n'

The return type of yaml.load is a python dictionary:

type(load(open("fruits.yml")))
<class 'dict'>

Have that in mind.

Jinja2

Jinja2 is a modern and designer-friendly templating language for Python.

As a template engine, we can use jinja2 to build complex markup (or even text) output, really fast and efficient.

Here is an jinja2 template example:

I like these tasty fruits:
* {{ fruit }}

where {{ fruit }} is a variable.
Declaring the fruit variable with some value and the jinja2 template can generate the prefarable output.

python-jinja

In an archlinux box, the system-wide installation of this python package, can be done by typing:

$ sudo pacman -S --noconfirm python-jinja

Python3 - Jinja2 Example

Below is a python3 - jinja2 example:

import jinja2

template = jinja2.Template("""
I like these tasty fruits:
* {{ fruit }}
""")

data = "Apple"
print(template.render(fruit=data))

The output of this example is:

I like these tasty fruits:
* Apple

File Template

Reading the jinja2 template from a template file, is a little more complicated than before. Building the jinja2 enviroment is step one:

env = jinja2.Environment(loader=jinja2.FileSystemLoader("./"))

and Jinja2 is ready to read the template file:

template = env.get_template("t.j2")

The template file: t.j2 is a litle diferrent than before:

I like these tasty fruits:
{% for fruit in fruits -%}
* {{ fruit }}
{% endfor %}

Yaml, Jinja2 and Python3

To render the template a dict of global variables must be passed. And parsing the yaml file the yaml.load returns a dictionary! So everything are in place.

Compine everything together:

from yaml import load
from jinja2 import Environment, FileSystemLoader

mydata = (load(open("fruits.yml")))

env = Environment(loader=FileSystemLoader("./"))
template = env.get_template("t.j2")

print(template.render(mydata))

and the result is:

$ python3 test.py

I like these tasty fruits:
* Apple
* Orange
* Strawberry
* Mango