TIL 01 - Get a OS X Preference via python

As I am trying to learn more of the Python programming language (version 2.7.* as that is what is currently built-in to OS X), I find little challenges to help process what I have learned of it. Recently I was introduced to the Foundation frameworks that come with OS X. For a while I was writing scripts that required plistlib which could only read the XML version of a plist. OS X stores preferences in binary plist form. In order to use plistlib then, I was shelling out using subprocess and converting the plist to xml form temporarily. As I am trying to stay away from some of the "bad Mac Admin" practices, I found myself needing a way to read preferences without messing with the hard files. I could use subprocess.check_output and read the results of defaults, but why add more complexity (just my opinion). Here is what I came up with (this example uses the Munki preference file):

#!/usr/bin/python
from Foundation import CFPreferencesCopyValue, \
                       kCFPreferencesAnyUser, \
                       kCFPreferencesAnyHost
def getpreferencekey(keytolookup):
    '''
    Returns Value for Requested Key in ManagedInstalls
    '''
    return CFPreferencesCopyValue(keytolookup, "/Library/Preferences/ManagedInstalls",
                              kCFPreferencesAnyUser, kCFPreferencesAnyHost)
munki_cid = getpreferencekey("ClientIdentifier")
munki_server = getpreferencekey("SoftwareRepoURL")
print munki_cid
print munki_server