Every single year that I’ve been doing this, I hear about the next “totally awesome” way to write code. And more often than not, the new thing is certainly very shiny. When it comes to projects, with the exception of coding standards (which will be part 4 of this series) I am not a fan … [Read more…]
Everyone loves Python’s dictionaries; they’re fast, easy to create and quite handy for a range of reasons. However, there are times that [“typing”][“out”][“all”][“those”] extra quotes and brackets seems excessive. Wouldn’t it be nicer to access.them.like.class.methods? Say hello to box.
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 | from box import Box movie_data = { "movies": { "Spaceballs": { "imdb_stars": 7.1, "rating": "PG", "length": 96, "Director": "Mel Brooks", "Stars": [{"name": "Mel Brooks", "imdb": "nm0000316", "role": "President Skroob"}, {"name": "John Candy","imdb": "nm0001006", "role": "Barf"}, {"name": "Rick Moranis", "imdb": "nm0001548", "role": "Dark Helmet"} ] }, "Robin Hood: Men in Tights": { "imdb_stars": 6.7, "rating": "PG-13", "length": 104, "Director": "Mel Brooks", "Stars": [ {"name": "Cary Elwes", "imdb": "nm0000144", "role": "Robin Hood"}, {"name": "Richard Lewis", "imdb": "nm0507659", "role": "Prince John"}, {"name": "Roger Rees", "imdb": "nm0715953", "role": "Sheriff of Rottingham"}, {"name": "Amy Yasbeck", "imdb": "nm0001865", "role": "Marian"} ] } } } my_box = Box(movie_data) my_box.movies.Spaceballs.rating 'PG' my_box.movies.Spaceballs.Stars[0].name 'Mel Brooks' my_box.movies.Spaceballs.Stars[0] # <Box: {'name': 'Mel Brooks', 'imdb': 'nm0000316', 'role': 'President Skroob'}> |
Box is a creation I made over three years ago, originally in the reusables code base … [Read more…]
Python is awesome, and can pretty much do everything you ever wanted, but on rare occasion, you may want to call an external program. The original way to do this with Python was to use os.system.
| 1 2 3 | import os return_code = os.system("echo 'May the force be with you'") |
The message “May the force be with you” would be printed to the terminal via stdout, and the return … [Read more…]
Reusables 0.8 has just been released, and it’s about time I give it a proper introduction. I started this project three years ago, with a simple goal of keeping code that I inevitably end up reusing grouped into a single library. It’s for the stuff that’s too small to do well as it’s own library, … [Read more…]
For many of us, as we develop as coders, we want to continue to grow our knowledge. We pour over the standard library (STL) of this wonderful language, looking for hidden gems. There are many such gems in the Python STL. Such as all the fun things you can do with sets and itertools. But … [Read more…]
Exceptions in Python aren’t new, and pretty easy to wrap your head around. Which means you should have no trouble following what this example will output.
| 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 | import warnings def bad_func(): try: assert False and True or False except AssertionError as outer_err: try: assert None is False except AssertionError as inner_err: warnings.warn("None is not False", UserWarning) raise inner_err from None else: return None else: return True finally: return False print(bad_func()) |
Simple, right? It raises both except clauses, triggering the warning and so your screen will obviously print False and the warning.
| 1 2 3 | False C:/python_file.py:15: UserWarning: None is not False warnings.warn("None is not False", UserWarning) |
So if you followed that without issue and … [Read more…]
Logging vs Print The difference between logging and using print isn’t simply personal preference, rather choosing the proper tool per use case. Check out the Python docs when to use logging if you don’t believe me. If you are simply using Python to write scripts with clear paths and failure on error, it’s perfectly reasonable to not have … [Read more…]