How to handle common variables between programs
I have been writing a lot of python programs lately for interacting with the Meraki Platform. I was tired of copying and pasting my variables and credentials between programs, plus I wanted the ability to easily upload the programs to GitHub without having to worry about sanitizing the program of my companies or personal data. I did some searching and didn’t find a lot so what I figured I would do is put this information into a python module and then I could call that module from within my programs and then I wouldn’t have to worry about keeping all of my data secure. I decided to call my module cred.py and then I could call it from within the program with just a “import cred”. I used to copy this file into each of the directories where I was working on a program. Then I ran into a problem where I had to change an API key, I then had to go through and find all of the cred.py files I had created and then update the data in them. That proved to be more of a pain than I wanted to deal with so I decided to place it in a central directory for all of my programs. This proved much easier, but then I had to figure out how to call it from within Python without making it a module in the install path.
That is where I came up with this:
import sys
#Import the CRED module from a separate directory
sys.path.insert(0,’../CRED’)
import cred
With this it allows me to keep one central directory to store all of my credentials, but also commonly needed variables. I call it from within the program and can then run my programs easily. Love to hear how others are handling this or if there is a better way for me to do it.
Breathe Underwater 