Quickstart: Create a Python app with Azure App Configuration

In this quickstart, you will use Azure App Configuration to centralize storage and management of application settings using the Azure App Configuration client library for Python.

Prerequisites

• Azure subscription - create one for free
• Python 2.7, or 3.6 or later - For information on setting up Python on Windows, see the Python on Windows documentation

Create an App Configuration store

1. To create a new App Configuration store, sign in to the Azure portal. In the upper-left corner of the home page, select Create a resource. In the Search the Marketplace box, enter App Configuration and select Enter.

   

2. Select App Configuration from the search results, and then select Create.

   

3. On the Create App Configuration pane, enter the following settings:

   Setting	Suggested value	Description
   Subscription	Your subscription	Select the Azure subscription that you want to use to test App Configuration. If your account has only one subscription, it's automatically selected and the Subscription list isn't displayed.
   Resource group	AppConfigTestResources	Select or create a resource group for your App Configuration store resource. This group is useful for organizing multiple resources that you might want to delete at the same time by deleting the resource group. For more information, see Use resource groups to manage your Azure resources.
   Resource name	Globally unique name	Enter a unique resource name to use for the App Configuration store resource. The name must be a string between 5 and 50 characters and contain only numbers, letters, and the - character. The name can't start or end with the - character.
   Location	Central US	Use Location to specify the geographic location in which your app configuration store is hosted. For the best performance, create the resource in the same region as other components of your application.
   Pricing tier	Free	Select the desired pricing tier. For more information, see the App Configuration pricing page.

4. Select Review + create to validate your settings.

5. Select Create. The deployment might take a few minutes.

6. After the deployment finishes, navigate to the App Configuration resource. Select Settings > Access keys. Make a note of the primary read-only key connection string. You'll use this connection string later to configure your application to communicate with the App Configuration store that you created.

7. Select Configuration Explorer > Create > Key-value to add the following key-value pairs:

   Key	Value
   TestApp:Settings:Message	Data from Azure App Configuration

   Leave Label and Content Type empty for now.

8. Select Apply.

Setting up the Python app

1. In this tutorial, you'll create a new directory for the project named app-configuration-quickstart.

   mkdir app-configuration-quickstart
   

2. Switch to the newly created app-configuration-quickstart directory.

   cd app-configuration-quickstart
   

3. Install the Azure App Configuration client library by using the pip install command.

   pip install azure-appconfiguration
   

4. Create a new file called app-configuration-quickstart.py in the app-configuration-quickstart directory and add the following code:

   import os
   from azure.appconfiguration import AzureAppConfigurationClient, ConfigurationSetting
   
   try:
       print("Azure App Configuration - Python Quickstart")
       # Quickstart code goes here
   except Exception as ex:
       print('Exception:')
       print(ex)
   

Configure your App Configuration connection string

1. Set an environment variable named AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING, and set it to the access key to your App Configuration store. At the command line, run the following command:

   setx AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
   

   If you use Windows PowerShell, run the following command:

   $Env:AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING = "connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store"
   

   If you use macOS or Linux, run the following command:

   export AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING='connection-string-of-your-app-configuration-store'
   

2. Restart the command prompt to allow the change to take effect. Print out the value of the environment variable to validate that it is set properly.

Code samples

The sample code snippets in this section show you how to perform common operations with the App Configuration client library for Python. Add these code snippets to the try block in app-configuration-quickstart.py file you created earlier.

• Connect to an App Configuration store
• Get a configuration setting
• Add a configuration setting
• Get a list of configuration settings
• Lock a configuration setting
• Unlock a configuration setting
• Update a configuration setting
• Delete a configuration setting

Connect to an App Configuration store

The following code snippet creates an instance of AzureAppConfigurationClient using the connection string stored in your environment variables.

    connection_string = os.getenv('AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING')
    app_config_client = AzureAppConfigurationClient.from_connection_string(connection_string)

Get a configuration setting

The following code snippet retrieves a configuration setting by key name.

    retrieved_config_setting = app_config_client.get_configuration_setting(key='TestApp:Settings:Message')
    print("\nRetrieved configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + retrieved_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + retrieved_config_setting.value)

Add a configuration setting

The following code snippet creates a ConfigurationSetting object with key and value fields and invokes the add_configuration_setting method. This method will throw an exception if you try to add a configuration setting that already exists in your store. If you want to avoid this exception, the set_configuration_setting method can be used instead.

    config_setting = ConfigurationSetting(
        key='TestApp:Settings:NewSetting',
        value='New setting value'
    )
    added_config_setting = app_config_client.add_configuration_setting(config_setting)
    print("\nAdded configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + added_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + added_config_setting.value)

Get a list of configuration settings

The following code snippet retrieves a list of configuration settings. The key_filter and label_filter arguments can be provided to filter key-values based on key and label respectively. For more information on filtering, see how to query configuration settings.

    filtered_settings_list = app_config_client.list_configuration_settings(key_filter="TestApp*")
    print("\nRetrieved list of configuration settings:")
    for item in filtered_settings_list:
        print("Key: " + item.key + ", Value: " + item.value)

Lock a configuration setting

The lock status of a key-value in App Configuration is denoted by the read_only attribute of the ConfigurationSetting object. If read_only is True, the setting is locked. The set_read_only method can be invoked with read_only=True argument to lock the configuration setting.

    locked_config_setting = app_config_client.set_read_only(added_config_setting, read_only=True)
    print("\nRead-only status for " + locked_config_setting.key + ": " + str(locked_config_setting.read_only))

Unlock a configuration setting

If the read_only attribute of a ConfigurationSetting is False, the setting is unlocked. The set_read_only method can be invoked with read_only=False argument to unlock the configuration setting.

    unlocked_config_setting = app_config_client.set_read_only(locked_config_setting, read_only=False)
    print("\nRead-only status for " + unlocked_config_setting.key + ": " + str(unlocked_config_setting.read_only))

Update a configuration setting

The set_configuration_setting method can be used to update an existing setting or create a new setting. The following code snippet changes the value of an existing configuration setting.

    added_config_setting.value = "Value has been updated!"
    updated_config_setting = app_config_client.set_configuration_setting(added_config_setting)
    print("\nUpdated configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + updated_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + updated_config_setting.value)

Delete a configuration setting

The following code snippet deletes a configuration setting by key name.

    deleted_config_setting = app_config_client.delete_configuration_setting(key="TestApp:Settings:NewSetting")
    print("\nDeleted configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + deleted_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + deleted_config_setting.value)

Run the app

In this quickstart, you created a Python app that uses the Azure App Configuration client library to retrieve a configuration setting created through the Azure portal, add a new setting, retrieve a list of existing settings, lock and unlock a setting, update a setting, and finally delete a setting.

At this point, your app-configuration-quickstart.py file should have the following code:

import os
from azure.appconfiguration import AzureAppConfigurationClient, ConfigurationSetting

try:
    print("Azure App Configuration - Python Quickstart")
    # Quickstart code goes here

    connection_string = os.getenv('AZURE_APP_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING')
    app_config_client = AzureAppConfigurationClient.from_connection_string(connection_string)

    retrieved_config_setting = app_config_client.get_configuration_setting(key='TestApp:Settings:Message')
    print("\nRetrieved configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + retrieved_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + retrieved_config_setting.value)

    config_setting = ConfigurationSetting(
        key='TestApp:Settings:NewSetting',
        value='New setting value'
    )
    added_config_setting = app_config_client.add_configuration_setting(config_setting)
    print("\nAdded configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + added_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + added_config_setting.value)

    filtered_settings_list = app_config_client.list_configuration_settings(key_filter="TestApp*")
    print("\nRetrieved list of configuration settings:")
    for item in filtered_settings_list:
        print("Key: " + item.key + ", Value: " + item.value)

    locked_config_setting = app_config_client.set_read_only(added_config_setting, read_only=True)
    print("\nRead-only status for " + locked_config_setting.key + ": " + str(locked_config_setting.read_only))

    unlocked_config_setting = app_config_client.set_read_only(locked_config_setting, read_only=False)
    print("\nRead-only status for " + unlocked_config_setting.key + ": " + str(unlocked_config_setting.read_only))

    added_config_setting.value = "Value has been updated!"
    updated_config_setting = app_config_client.set_configuration_setting(added_config_setting)
    print("\nUpdated configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + updated_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + updated_config_setting.value)

    deleted_config_setting = app_config_client.delete_configuration_setting(key="TestApp:Settings:NewSetting")
    print("\nDeleted configuration setting:")
    print("Key: " + deleted_config_setting.key + ", Value: " + deleted_config_setting.value)

except Exception as ex:
    print('Exception:')
    print(ex)

In your console window, navigate to the directory containing the app-configuration-quickstart.py file and execute the following python command to run the app:

python app-configuration-quickstart.py

You should see the following output:

Azure App Configuration - Python Quickstart

Retrieved configuration setting:
Key: TestApp:Settings:Message, Value: Data from Azure App Configuration

Added configuration setting:
Key: TestApp:Settings:NewSetting, Value: New setting value

Retrieved list of configuration settings:
Key: TestApp:Settings:Message, Value: Data from Azure App Configuration
Key: TestApp:Settings:NewSetting, Value: New setting value

Read-only status for TestApp:Settings:NewSetting: True

Read-only status for TestApp:Settings:NewSetting: False

Updated configuration setting:
Key: TestApp:Settings:NewSetting, Value: Value has been updated!

Deleted configuration setting:
Key: TestApp:Settings:NewSetting, Value: Value has been updated!

Clean up resources

If you do not want to continue using the resources created in this article, delete the resource group you created here to avoid charges.

1. Sign in to the Azure portal, and select Resource groups.
2. In the Filter by name box, enter the name of your resource group.
3. In the result list, select the resource group name to see an overview.
4. Select Delete resource group.
5. You're asked to confirm the deletion of the resource group. Enter the name of your resource group to confirm, and select Delete.

After a few moments, the resource group and all its resources are deleted.

Next steps

In this quickstart, you created a new App Configuration store and learned how to access key-values from a Python app.

For additional code samples, visit: