Loading an object across multiple files

I’m making a game in Python, and I have an object to store all of the user’s preferences in, referred to as gameSettings.

When running functions in a seperate file (functions.py) I have to create a new local gameSettings var in every single function in the file.

# functions.py

def myFunc1(x, y, gameSettings):
  if gameSettings.printX == True:
    print(x)

def myFunc2(z, gameSettings):
  if gameSettings.printZ == True:
    print(z)

def myFunc3(a, b, gameSettings):
  if gameSettings.add == True:
    print(a+b)
  elif gameSettings.subtract == True:
    print(a-b)

# (example code)

This also means I have to run the gameSettings object through almost every function I’ve written so far.

I was wondering if there was a better way to do this, as I doubt this is very efficient. I can’t just import the gameSettings object at launch (as that would cause a circular import), but even if I could the object’s variables can be modified by the user and my guess is that changing the gameSettings object in main.py will not change its functions.py counterpart.

Answer

How do you see this solution? Using a shared dictionary. From my experience, I’d store that settings as a .json file and load it when you start the game.

main.py

from func1 import Func1
from func2 import Func2

class GameSettings():
  def __init__(self, printX=False, printZ=False):
    self.settings = { 'printX': printX, 'printZ': printZ } 

settings = GameSettings(printX=True, printZ=False)
func1 = Func1(settings)

func1.myFunc1(1, 2)

print(func1.settings.settings)
settings.settings.update({'printX': False})
print(func1.settings.settings)
func1.myFunc1(1, 2)

func2 = Func2(settings)
func2.myFunc2(3)

settings.settings.update({'printZ': True})
func2.myFunc2(3)

func1.py

class Func1():
  def __init__(self, settings=None):
    self.settings = settings

  def myFunc1(self, x, y):
    if self.settings.settings['printX'] == True:
      print(x)

func2.py

class Func2():
  def __init__(self, settings=None):
    self.settings = settings
    
  def myFunc2(self, z):
    if self.settings.settings['printZ'] == True:
      print(z)

Here’s the output of executing this code

bash-5.1$ python3 main.py 
1
{'printX': True, 'printZ': False}
{'printX': False, 'printZ': False}
3