Contents
About the Author
About the Technical Reviewer
Preface
Introduction
CHAPTER 1 Instant Hacking: The Basics
Installing Python
Windows
Linux and UNIX
Macintosh
Other Distributions
Keeping in Touch and Up-to-Date
The Interactive Interpreter
Algo . . . What?
Numbers and Expressions
Large Integers
Hexadecimals and Octals
Variables
Statements
Getting Input from the User
Functions
Modules
cmath and Complex Numbers
Back to the __future__
Saving and Executing Your Programs
Running Your Python Scripts from a Command Prompt
Making Your Scripts Behave Like Normal Programs
Comments
Strings
Single-Quoted Strings and Escaping Quotes
Concatenating Strings
String Representations, str and repr
input vs. raw_input
Long Strings, Raw Strings, and Unicode
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 2 Lists and Tuples
Sequence Overview
Common Sequence Operations
Indexing
Slicing
Adding Sequences
Multiplication
Membership
Length, Minimum, and Maximum
Lists: Python’s Workhorse
The list Function
Basic List Operations
List Methods
Tuples: Immutable Sequences
The tuple Function
Basic Tuple Operations
So What’s the Point?
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 3 Working with Strings
Basic String Operations
String Formatting: The Short Version
String Formatting: The Long Version
Simple Conversion
Width and Precision
Signs, Alignment, and Zero-Padding
String Methods
find
join
lower
replace
split
strip
translate
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 4 Dictionaries: When Indices Won’t Do
Dictionary Uses
Creating and Using Dictionaries
The dict Function
Basic Dictionary Operations
String Formatting with Dictionaries
Dictionary Methods
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 5 Conditionals, Loops, and Some Other Statements
More About print and import
Printing with Commas
Importing Something As Something Else
Assignment Magic
Sequence Unpacking
Chained Assignments
Augmented Assignments
Blocks: The Joy of Indentation
Conditions and Conditional Statements
So That’s What Those Boolean Values Are For
Conditional Execution and the if Statement
else Clauses
elif Clauses
Nesting Blocks
More Complex Conditions
Assertions
Loops
while Loops
for Loops
Iterating Over Dictionaries
Some Iteration Utilities
Breaking Out of Loops
else Clauses in Loops
List Comprehension—Slightly Loopy
And Three for the Road
Nothing Happened!
Deleting with del
Executing and Evaluating Strings with exec and eval
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 6 Abstraction
Laziness Is a Virtue
Abstraction and Structure
Creating Your Own Functions
Documenting Functions
Functions That Aren’t Really Functions
The Magic of Parameters
Where Do the Values Come From?
Can I Change a Parameter?
Keyword Parameters and Defaults
Collecting Parameters
Reversing the Process
Parameter Practice
Scoping
Recursion
Two Classics: Factorial and Power
Another Classic: Binary Search
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 7 More Abstraction
The Magic of Objects
Polymorphism
Encapsulation
Inheritance
Classes and Types
What Is a Class, Exactly?
Making Your Own Classes
Attributes, Functions, and Methods
Privacy Revisited
The Class Namespace
Specifying a Superclass
Investigating Inheritance
Multiple Superclasses
Interfaces and Introspection
Some Thoughts on Object-Oriented Design
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 8 Exceptions
What Is an Exception?
Making Things Go Wrong . . . Your Way
The raise Statement
Custom Exception Classes
Catching Exceptions
Look, Ma, No Arguments!
More Than One except Clause
Catching Two Exceptions with One Block
Catching the Object
A Real Catchall
When All Is Well
And Finally
Exceptions and Functions
The Zen of Exceptions
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 9 Magic Methods, Properties, and Iterators
Before We Begin
Constructors
Overriding Methods in General, and the Constructor in Particular
Calling the Unbound Superclass Constructor
Using the super Function
Item Access
The Basic Sequence and Mapping Protocol
Subclassing list, dict, and str
More Magic
Properties
The property Function
Static Methods and Class Methods
__getattr__, __setattr__, and Friends
Iterators
The Iterator Protocol
Making Sequences from Iterators
Generators
Making a Generator
A Recursive Generator
Generators in General
Generator Methods
Simulating Generators
The Eight Queens
Generators and Backtracking
The Problem
State Representation
Finding Conflicts
The Base Case
The Recursive Case
Wrapping It Up
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 10 Batteries Included
Modules
Modules Are Programs
Modules Are Used to Define Things
Making Your Modules Available
Packages
Exploring Modules
What’s in a Module?
Getting Help with help
Documentation
Use the Source
The Standard Library: A Few Favorites
sys
os
fileinput
Sets, Heaps, and Deques
time
random
shelve
re
Other Interesting Standard Modules
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 11 Files and Stuff
Opening Files
File Modes
Buffering
The Basic File Methods
Reading and Writing
Piping Output
Reading and Writing Lines
Closing Files
Using the Basic File Methods
Iterating over File Contents
Doing It Byte by Byte
One Line at a Time
Reading Everything
Lazy Line Iteration with fileinput
File Iterators
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 12 Graphical User Interfaces
A Plethora of Platforms
Downloading and Installing wxPython
Building a Sample GUI Application
Getting Started
Windows and Components
Labels, Titles, and Positions
More Intelligent Layout
Event Handling
The Finished Program
But I’d Rather Use
Using Tkinter
Using Jython and Swing
Using Something Else
A Quick Summary
What Now?
CHAPTER 13 Database Support
The Python Database API
Global Variables
Exceptions
Connections and Cursors
Types
SQLite and PySQLite
Getting Started
A Sample Database Application
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 14 Network Programming
A Handful of Networking Modules
The socket Module
The urllib and urllib2 Modules
Other Modules
SocketServer and Friends
Multiple Connections
Forking and Threading with SocketServer
Asynchronous I/O with select and poll
Twisted
Downloading and Installing Twisted
Writing a Twisted Server
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 15 Python and the Web
Screen Scraping
Tidy and XHTML Parsing
Beautiful Soup
Dynamic Web Pages with CGI
Step 1. Preparing the Web Server
Step 2. Adding the Pound Bang Line
Step 3. Setting the File Permissions
CGI Security Risks
A Simple CGI Script
Debugging with cgitb
Using the cgi Module
A Simple Form
One Step Up: mod_python
Installing mod_python
CGI Handler
PSP
The Publisher
Web Application Frameworks
Web Services: Scraping Done Right
RSS and Friends
Remote Procedure Calls with XML-RPC
SOAP
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 16 Testing, 1-2-3
Test First, Code Later
Precise Requirement Specification
Planning for Change
The 1-2-3 (and 4) of Testing
Tools for Testing
doctest
unittest
Beyond Unit Tests
Source Code Checking with PyChecker and PyLint
Profiling
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 17 Extending Python
The Best of Both Worlds
The Really Easy Way: Jython and IronPython
Writing C Extensions
A Swig of . . . SWIG
Hacking It on Your Own
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 18 Packaging Your Programs
Distutils Basics
Wrapping Things Up
Building an Archive File
Creating a Windows Installer or an RPM Package
Compiling Extensions
Creating Executable Programs with py2exe
A Quick Summary
New Functions in This Chapter
What Now?
CHAPTER 19 Playful Programming
Why Playful?
The Jujitsu of Programming
Prototyping
Configuration
Extracting Constants
Configuration Files
Logging
If You Can’t Be Bothered
If You Want to Learn More
A Quick Summary
What Now?
CHAPTER 20 Project 1: Instant Markup
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Finding Blocks of Text
Adding Some Markup
Second Implementation
Handlers
A Handler Superclass
Rules
A Rule Superclass
Filters
The Parser
Constructing the Rules and Filters
Putting It All Together
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 21 Project 2: Painting a Pretty Picture
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Drawing with ReportLab
Constructing Some PolyLines
Writing the Prototype
Second Implementation
Getting the Data
Using the LinePlot Class
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 22 Project 3: XML for All Occasions
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Creating a Simple Content Handler
Creating HTML Pages
Second Implementation
A Dispatcher Mix-In Class
Factoring Out the Header, Footer, and Default Handling
Support for Directories
The Event Handlers
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 23 Project 4: In the News
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Second Implementation
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 24 Project 5: A Virtual Tea Party
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
The ChatServer Class
The ChatSession Class
Putting It Together
Second Implementation
Basic Command Interpretation
Rooms
Login and Logout Rooms
The Main Chat Room
The New Server
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 25 Project 6: Remote Editing with CGI
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Second Implementation
Creating the File Name Form
Writing the Editor Script
Writing the Save Script
Running the Editor
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 26 Project 7: Your Own Bulletin Board
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Second Implementation
Writing the Main Script
Writing the View Script
Writing the Edit Script
Writing the Save Script
Trying It Out
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 27 Project 8: File Sharing with XML-RPC
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Implementing a Simple Node
Trying Out the First Implementation
Second Implementation
Creating the Client Interface
Raising Exceptions
Validating File Names
Trying Out the Second Implementation
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 28 Project 9: File Sharing II—Now with GUI!
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
Preparations
First Implementation
Second Implementation
Further Exploration
What Now?
CHAPTER 29 Project 10: Do-It-Yourself Arcade Game
What’s the Problem?
Useful Tools
pygame
pygame.locals
pygame.display
pygame.font
pygame.sprite
pygame.mouse
pygame.event
pygame.image
Preparations
First Implementation
Second Implementation
Further Exploration
What Now?
APPENDIX A The Short Version
The Basics
Functions
Objects and Stuff
Some Loose Ends
APPENDIX B Python Reference
Expressions
Statements
Simple Statements
Compound Statements
APPENDIX C Online Resources
Python Distributions
Python Documentation
Useful Toolkits and Modules
Newsgroups, Mailing Lists, and Blogs
APPENDIX D Python 3.0
Strings and I/O
Strings, Bytes, and Encodings
Console I/O
New String Formatting
Classes and Functions
Function Annotation
Abstract Base Classes
Class Decorators and New Metaclass Syntax
Keyword-Only Parameters
Nonlocal Variables
Iterables, Comprehensions, and Views
Extended Iterable Unpacking
Dictionary and Set Comprehension
Dictionary Views
Iterator Return Values
Things That Have Gone
Some Minor Issues
The Standard Library
Other Stuff
INDEX
