Expert Python Programming .th

[Pages:373]Expert Python Programming

Learn best practices to designing, coding, and distributing your Python software

Tarek Ziad?

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Expert Python Programming

Copyright ? 2008 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, Packt Publishing, nor its dealers or distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: September 2008

Production Reference: 1110908

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. 32 Lincoln Road Olton Birmingham, B27 6PA, UK. ISBN 978-1-847194-94-7 Cover Image by Javier BarrXa C. (jbarriac@)

Credits

Author Tarek Ziad?

Reviewers Shannon -jj Behrens Paul Kennedy Wendy Langer

Senior Acquisition Editor Douglas Paterson

Development Editor Ved Prakash Jha

Technical Editor Siddharth Mangarole

Copy Editor Sneha Kulkarni

Editorial Team Leader Mithil Kulkarni

Project Manager Abhijeet Deobhakta

Project Coordinator Patricia Weir

Indexer Rekha Nair

Proofreader Chris Smith

Production Coordinators Aparna Bhagat Rajni Thorat

Cover Work Aparna Bhagat

Foreword

Python has come a long way.

There was a time when companies would call me crazy when I insisted on using Python. These days, there simply aren't enough Python coders to go around. Major companies such as Google, YouTube, VMware, and DreamWorks are in a constant scramble to snatch up all the good Python talent they can find.

Python used to lag behind Perl because Perl had CPAN. These days, setuptools and PyPI have led to an explosion of readily available, high-quality, third-party Python libraries. Python also used to lag behind Java Servlets and Ruby on Rails because there was no standard API for interacting with web servers. These days, the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) has led to a renaissance in the Python web world. Thanks to Google App Engine, I think we'll see even more.

Python seems to attract programmers who are highly opinionated and have a real taste for elegance. Very few people become Python programmers because it's what they learned in college, or because it's what all the big companies are using. Rather, people are drawn to Python when they discover its intrinsic beauty. Because of this, there are a surprising number of Python books. I don't have the statistics to prove it, but it seems to me that Python has a higher ratio of books to programmers than any other language. However, historically, there haven't been enough advanced Python books. That's about to change.

This book presents an interesting list of topics. It covers a range of Python features and how to use them in unexpected ways. It also covers a selection of interesting third-party libraries and tools. Along the way, agile programming with Python tools and libraries is covered. This includes test-driven development with Nose, document-driven development with doctest, source control with Mercurial, continuous integration with Buildbot, and project management with Trac. Finally, it covers more traditional topics such as profiling, optimization, and design patterns such as Alex Martelli's infamous Borg approach to Singletons.

If you're looking to progress from knowing Python to mastering Python, this is the book for you. In fact, this is exactly the type of book I wish I had had five years ago. What took me years to discover by steadfastly attending talks at PyCon and my local Python users' group is now available in a succinct book form.

There has never been a more exciting time to be a Python programmer!

Shannon -jj Behrens

Moderator of the San Francisco Bay Area Python Interest Group

About the Author

Tarek Ziad? is CTO at Ingeniweb in Paris, working on Python, Zope, and Plone

technology and on Quality Assurance. He has been involved for five years in the Zope community and has contributed to the Zope code itself.

Tarek has also created Afpy, the French Python User Group and has written two books in French about Python. He has gave numerous talks and tutorials in French and international events like Solutions Linux, Pycon, OSCON, and EuroPython.

Before starting with Chapter 1, I would like to thank a few people that helped me while I was writing this book:

The whole Python community of course, the AFPY user group, Stefan Schwarzer for his slides on optimization, his quote and his great feedback and reviews, Georg Brandl for reviewing Chapter 10 about Sphinx, Peter Bulychev for assistance on CloneDigger, Ian Bicking for assistance on minimock, the Logilab team for assistance on PyLint, Gael Pasgrimaud, Jean-Fran?ois Roche, and Kai Lautaportti for their work on collective.buildbot, Cyrille Lebeaupin, Olivier Grisel, Sebastien Douche and St?fane Fermigier for various reviews.

Thanks to the OmniGroup and their great OmniGraffle tool; all diagrams were made with it (see applications/OmniGraffle).

A very special thanks goes to Shannon "jj" Behrens who did a deep reviewing of this book.

About the Reviewers

Shannon -jj Behrens is the moderator of the San Francisco Bay Area Python

Interest Group. While not technical editing Python books and hopping from startup to startup, he enjoys playing with his four kids and blogging at . .

I'd like to thank Tarek for patiently listening to all my critiques, and I'd like to thank my lovely wife, Gina-Marie Behrens, for protecting me from the kids long enough to finish editing the book.

Paul Kennedy is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering and Information

Technology at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is also Director of the Knowledge Infrastructure Laboratory in the UTS Centre for Quantum Computation and Intelligent Systems. Dr Kennedy has been developing software professionally since 1989 with a career bridging industry and academia. He has worked with languages including C/C++ and Python and in such diverse areas as computer graphics, artificial intelligence, bioinformatics, and data mining. For the last ten years he has been teaching undergraduate and postgraduate students in software engineering and data mining. He completed his PhD in Computing Science in 1998 and regularly consults to industry in data mining projects. He has been General Chair of the Australasian Data Mining Conference for 2006-2008, has actively contributed to international Program Committees, reviewed for international journals, and has more than 30 publications.

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download