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+---
+title: 'TIL: Initiate Config class in Python'
+description: 'Today I Learned a neat trick to initiate a Config class from a JSON file in Python'
+date: '2024-11-27T14:36:00+02:00'
+tags: ['python']
+---
+
+I came across [anthonywritescode's](https://github.com/anthonywritescode) Github repository for his [twitch-chat-bot](https://github.com/anthonywritescode/twitch-chat-bot) which is written in Python. I have not written much Python in my life so maybe this is trivial, but I found it to be a neat little trick anyways.
+
+<!--more-->
+
+Consider you have the following JSON config file.
+
+```jsonc
+// file: config.json
+{
+    "username": "claw0ry",
+    "token": "636DDA4D-A395-43C5-A2B1-7A0401DE51AB"
+
+}
+```
+
+In the past I would probably have loaded it like this:
+
+```python
+import json
+
+class Config():
+    username: str
+    token: str
+
+    def validate_username(self) -> bool:
+        return True if len(self.username) > 0 else False
+
+with open('./config.json') as f:
+    d = json.load(f)
+    cfg = Config(username=d.username, token=d.token)
+
+print(cfg.validate_username())
+```
+
+What we essentially are doing is that we load the `config.json` into a variable as dictionary and then we initiate a new Config class and assign each class property by arguments. With this little trick we can make Python do it for us.
+
+```python
+import json
+from typing import NamedTuple
+
+class Config(NamedTuple):
+    username: str
+    token: str
+
+    def validate_username(self) -> bool:
+        return True if len(self.username) > 0 else False
+
+with open('./config.json') as f:
+    cfg = Config(**json.load(f))
+
+print(cfg.validate_username())
+```
+
+The first thing to notice is that our `Config` class now takes arguments in the form of a `NamedTuple`. Then we have combined the `json.load()` with `**` when initiating our Config class. The `json.load()` method will give us a Python dictionary from the `config.json` file. We then unpack the dictionary (with `**`) into named arguments for the Config class.
+
+It's not much, but a neat little shortcut and in my opinion it reads a little better too.