Module preferences

A module to make the interface to the mmpref library more Pythonic. It contains a single class that can be created once and then used to access preference data.

This class also provides data type-free .get(), .set() and .getAllPreferences() methods.

Simple script usage might look like this:

   import preferences

   # Initialize the preference handler
   pref_handler = preferences.Preferences(preferences.SCRIPTS)

   # Store and get all preferences from a group specific to this script
   pref_handler.beginGroup('my_script')

   # Set the preference 'hosts' to 5
   pref_handler.set('hosts', 5)

   # Get the value of the hosts preference
   num_hosts = pref_handler.get('hosts', default=8)

   # Get the value of the jobname preference, with myjob as the default
   # name if no preference is set
   jobname = pref_handler.get('jobname', default='myjob')

Slightly more complex script usage using groups might look like this:

   import preferences

   # Initialize the preference handler
   pref_handler = preferences.Preferences(preferences.SCRIPTS)

   # Store and get all preferences from a group specific to this script
   pref_handler.beginGroup('my_script')

   # Set the preference 'hosts' to 5
   pref_handler.set('hosts', 5)

   # Switch to the group 'my_script/dialogs'
   pref_handler.beginGroup('dialogs')
   # Set the value of the 'my_script/dialogs/import_directory preference
   pref_handler.set('import_directory', directory)

   # Reset the current group to the 'my_script' group
   pref_handler.resetGroup(retain=1)

   # Get the value of the hosts preference
   num_hosts = pref_handler.get('hosts', default=8)

   # Change the value of the 'my_script/dialogs/import_directory' preference
   pref_handler.set('dialogs/import_directory', directory2)

   # Switch to the group 'my_script/dialogs'
   pref_handler.beginGroup('dialogs')

   # Get the import directory
   imdir = pref_handler.get('import_directory')