advanced patterns When Using Nested Dictionaries to Represent Configurations in Python 3.10
I just started working with I've encountered a strange issue with I'm having trouble with I recently switched to I've searched everywhere and can't find a clear answer... I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... Quick question that's been bugging me - I'm currently working on a configuration management system in Python 3.10, where I'm trying to use nested dictionaries to represent various settings for different modules. The scenario arises when I try to access a specific nested value. I expect to get a default value if a certain key doesn’t exist, but instead, I'm working with a `KeyError`. Here’s a snippet of my code: ```python config = { 'database': { 'host': 'localhost', 'port': 5432, 'credentials': { 'user': 'admin', 'password': 'secret' } }, 'service': { 'timeout': 30 } } # Attempting to access a nested value try: db_user = config['database']['credentials']['user'] service_timeout = config['service']['timeout'] non_existent_key = config['service']['retry_attempts'] # KeyError expected except KeyError as e: print(f'KeyError: {e}') ``` I expected that accessing `config['service']['retry_attempts']` would return `None` or some default value if the key doesn’t exist. Instead, I see a `KeyError`. I have also tried using the `get` method on the nested dictionaries, like this: ```python retry_attempts = config['service'].get('retry_attempts', 3) ``` This works for the immediate dictionary, but if I attempt to nest it like `config.get('service', {}).get('retry_attempts', 3)`, it seems to be unnecessarily verbose. Is there a cleaner way to handle these nested dictionary accesses without running into `KeyError`? I’ve also read about using `defaultdict` from the `collections` module, but I’m unsure if that would help in this case. Any suggestions on best practices for handling nested dictionaries in configuration management? What's the best practice here? This is part of a larger desktop app I'm building. Thanks for your help in advance! Could this be a known issue? I'm developing on CentOS with Python. What's the correct way to implement this? I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. Any pointers in the right direction?