Using ConfigParser to read a file without section name

The easiest way to do this is to use python's CSV parser, in my opinion. Here's a read/write function demonstrating this approach as well as a test driver. This should work provided the values are not allowed to be multi-line. :)

import csv
import operator

def read_properties(filename):
    """ Reads a given properties file with each line of the format key=value.  Returns a dictionary containing the pairs.

    Keyword arguments:
        filename -- the name of the file to be read
    """
    result={ }
    with open(filename, "rb") as csvfile:
        reader = csv.reader(csvfile, delimiter='=', escapechar='\\', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
        for row in reader:
            if len(row) != 2:
                raise csv.Error("Too many fields on row with contents: "+str(row))
            result[row[0]] = row[1] 
    return result

def write_properties(filename,dictionary):
    """ Writes the provided dictionary in key-sorted order to a properties file with each line of the format key=value

    Keyword arguments:
        filename -- the name of the file to be written
        dictionary -- a dictionary containing the key/value pairs.
    """
    with open(filename, "wb") as csvfile:
        writer = csv.writer(csvfile, delimiter='=', escapechar='\\', quoting=csv.QUOTE_NONE)
        for key, value in sorted(dictionary.items(), key=operator.itemgetter(0)):
                writer.writerow([ key, value])

def main():
    data={
        "Hello": "5+5=10",
        "World": "Snausage",
        "Awesome": "Possum"
    }

    filename="test.properties"
    write_properties(filename,data)
    newdata=read_properties(filename)

    print "Read in: "
    print newdata
    print

    contents=""
    with open(filename, 'rb') as propfile:
        contents=propfile.read()
    print "File contents:"
    print contents

    print ["Failure!", "Success!"][data == newdata]
    return

if __name__ == '__main__': 
     main() 

Having ran into this problem myself, I wrote a complete wrapper to ConfigParser (the version in Python 2) that can read and write files without sections transparently, based on Alex Martelli's approach linked on the accepted answer. It should be a drop-in replacement to any usage of ConfigParser. Posting it in case anyone in need of that finds this page.

import ConfigParser
import StringIO

class SectionlessConfigParser(ConfigParser.RawConfigParser):
    """
    Extends ConfigParser to allow files without sections.

    This is done by wrapping read files and prepending them with a placeholder
    section, which defaults to '__config__'
    """

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        default_section = kwargs.pop('default_section', None)
        ConfigParser.RawConfigParser.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs)

        self._default_section = None
        self.set_default_section(default_section or '__config__')

    def get_default_section(self):
        return self._default_section

    def set_default_section(self, section):
        self.add_section(section)

        # move all values from the previous default section to the new one
        try:
            default_section_items = self.items(self._default_section)
            self.remove_section(self._default_section)
        except ConfigParser.NoSectionError:
            pass
        else:
            for (key, value) in default_section_items:
                self.set(section, key, value)

        self._default_section = section

    def read(self, filenames):
        if isinstance(filenames, basestring):
            filenames = [filenames]

        read_ok = []
        for filename in filenames:
            try:
                with open(filename) as fp:
                    self.readfp(fp)
            except IOError:
                continue
            else:
                read_ok.append(filename)

        return read_ok

    def readfp(self, fp, *args, **kwargs):
        stream = Str