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Last update: October 14, 2024 07:43 PM UTC

October 14, 2024

Real Python

Syntactic Sugar: Why Python Is Sweet and Pythonic

Python has several pieces of syntax that are syntactic sugar. This sugar is syntax that isn’t strictly necessary but gives Python some of its flavor as a readable, beginner-friendly, and powerful language. In this tutorial, you’ll explore some of Python’s most used pieces of syntactic sugar.

In practice, you already use most of these pieces of syntax, as they include many well-known Pythonic constructs. As you read on, you’ll see how Python works under the hood and learn how to use the language efficiently and securely.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn:

  • What syntactic sugar is
  • How syntactic sugar applies to operators
  • How assignment expressions are syntactic sugar
  • How for loops and comprehensions are syntactic sugar
  • How other Python constructs are also syntactic sugar

To get the most out of this tutorial, you should be familiar with the basics of Python, including operators, expressions, loops, decorators, classes, context managers, and more.

Get Your Code: Click here to download the free sample code that shows you how to use syntactic sugar in Python.

Take the Quiz: Test your knowledge with our interactive “Syntactic Sugar: Why Python Is Sweet and Pythonic” quiz. You’ll receive a score upon completion to help you track your learning progress:

Syntactic Sugar: Why Python Is Sweet and Pythonic

Interactive Quiz

Syntactic Sugar: Why Python Is Sweet and Pythonic

You can take this quiz to test your understanding of Python's most common pieces of syntactic sugar and how they make your code more Pythonic and readable.

Syntactic Sugar

In programming, syntactic sugar refers to pieces of syntax that simplify the code and make it more readable or concise. Syntactic sugar lets you express things in a clearer and more readable way.

It makes the language sweeter for human use: things can be expressed more clearly, more concisely, or in an alternative style that some may prefer. (Source)

However, syntactic sugar is something that you may not need in practice because you can get the same result using a different, and often more involved, construct.

Note: This tutorial is slightly inspired by Brett Cannon’s series of posts about unraveling syntactic sugar in Python. In that series, Brett goes deep into each piece of syntactic sugar. You can check out the series if you’d like a detailed discussion of the syntax constructs covered in this tutorial and others.

Python has many pieces of syntactic sugar that you’ll regularly use in your code. These syntax constructs make Python more readable, quicker to write, and user-friendly. Understanding these syntactic sugar pieces and their significance will help you better understand the inner workings of Python.

In rare situations, you’ll find that desugared versions of a given piece of syntactic sugar can better fulfill your needs. So, knowing about the alternative code to a given sugar can be a good skill to have.

Operators in Python

As with most programming languages, Python makes extensive use of operators. You’ll find several categories of operators, including arithmetic, assignment, augmented assignment, comparison, Boolean, and membership operators. All these operators are part of Python’s syntactic sugar constructs because they let you write expressions in a quick and readable way.

Note: To dive deeper into Python operators, check out the Operators and Expressions in Python tutorial.

For example, arithmetic operators allow you to create math expressions that are quick to write and read because they look pretty similar to what you learned in math class:

Python 
>>> 5 + 7
12

>>> 10 - 4
6

>>> 2 * 4
8

>>> 20 / 2
10
Copied!

In the first example, you use the plus operator (+) to add two numbers. In the second example, you use the subtraction operator (-) to subtract two numbers. The final two examples perform multiplication and division.

Python supports its arithmetic operators through special methods. Here’s a quick summary:

Operator Operation Method
+ Addition .__add__()
- Subtraction .__sub__()
* Multiplication .__mul__()
/ Division .__truediv__()
// Integer division .__floordiv__()
** Exponentiation .__pow__()

What does it mean to say Python supports its operators through special methods? It means that every time you use an operator, Python calls the corresponding special method under the hood.

Note: To learn more about special methods, also known as magic or dunder methods, check out Python’s Magic Methods: Leverage Their Power in Your Classes.

To illustrate, here’s how you can express the arithmetic operations you wrote earlier using the appropriate special methods:

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/syntactic-sugar-python/ »

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 14, 2024 02:00 PM UTC

Lucas Cimon

fpdf2 latest news

I wrote my last post on fpdf2 18 months ago. We released 7 more versions of fpdf2 since then!

This article will present some of the major features introduced since v2.7.3 to v2.8.1 of fpdf2: click on the buttons below to reveal the various changes brought …


— Permalink

October 14, 2024 01:47 PM UTC

Python Bytes

#405 Oh Really?

<strong>Topics covered in this episode:</strong><br> <ul> <li><strong><a href="https://github.com/briefercloud/briefer?featured_on=pythonbytes">Briefer: Dashboards and notebooks in a single place</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://bioinf.comav.upv.es/courses/intro_programming/?featured_on=pythonbytes">Introduction to programming with Python</a></strong></li> <li><strong><a href="https://github.com/astral-sh/setup-uv?featured_on=pythonbytes">setup-uv</a></strong></li> <li><a href="https://htmlforpeople.com?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>HTML for people</strong></a></li> <li><strong>Extras</strong></li> <li><strong>Joke</strong></li> </ul><a href='https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EB2emah5d5g' style='font-weight: bold;'data-umami-event="Livestream-Past" data-umami-event-episode="405">Watch on YouTube</a><br> <p><strong>About the show</strong></p> <p>Sponsored by ScoutAPM: <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/scout"><strong>pythonbytes.fm/scout</strong></a></p> <p><strong>Connect with the hosts</strong></p> <ul> <li>Michael: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@mkennedy"><strong>@mkennedy@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Brian: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@brianokken"><strong>@brianokken@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> <li>Show: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@pythonbytes"><strong>@pythonbytes@fosstodon.org</strong></a></li> </ul> <p>Join us on YouTube at <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/stream/live"><strong>pythonbytes.fm/live</strong></a> to be part of the audience. Usually <strong>Monday</strong> at 10am PT. Older video versions available there too.</p> <p>Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to <a href="https://pythonbytes.fm/friends-of-the-show">our friends of the show list</a>, we'll never share it.</p> <p><strong>Michael #1:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/briefercloud/briefer?featured_on=pythonbytes">Briefer: Dashboards and notebooks in a single place</a></p> <ul> <li>Notebooks and dashboards with Python, SQL, scheduling, native visualizations, code generation, and more.</li> <li>In Briefer, you can: <ul> <li><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f4da.png?version=8.0.0" alt="books" /><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f4ca.png?version=8.0.0" alt="bar chart" /> <strong>Create notebooks and dashboards</strong> using Markdown, Python, SQL, and native visualizations.</li> <li><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f933.png?version=8.0.0" alt="selfie" /> <strong>Build interactive data apps</strong> using inputs, dropdowns, and date pickers.</li> <li><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f916.png?version=8.0.0" alt="robot" /> <strong>Generate code and queries</strong> using an AI that understands your database schema and your notebook's context.</li> <li><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/1f570.png?version=8.0.0" alt="mantelpiece clock" /> <strong>Schedule notebooks and dashboards</strong> to run and update periodically.</li> <li><img src="https://paper.dropboxstatic.com/static/img/ace/emoji/2699.png?version=8.0.0" alt="gear" /> <strong>Create and test ad-hoc pipelines</strong> using writebacks.</li> </ul></li> <li><strong>Briefer vs. Traditional BI Tools:</strong> Briefer is better than traditional BI tools because it's faster and more flexible, thanks to Python.</li> <li><strong>Briefer vs. Traditional Notebooks:</strong> In Briefer, you can run SQL queries against connected data sources directly in your notebook. Then, <strong>Briefer will automatically turn your query into a data frame and store it in a variable that you can use in your Python blocks</strong>.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #2:</strong> <a href="https://bioinf.comav.upv.es/courses/intro_programming/?featured_on=pythonbytes">Introduction to programming with Python</a></p> <ul> <li>Jose Blanca <ul> <li>“Python intro aimed at students with no prior programming experience.”</li> <li>“Relies mainly on examples and exercises.”</li> <li>“Does not try to cover every detail of the Python language, but just what a beginner might need to start the journey.”</li> <li>Tech: “… built with the <a href="https://quarto.org/?featured_on=pythonbytes">quarto</a> publishing system complemented by the <a href="https://github.com/r-wasm/quarto-live?featured_on=pythonbytes">quarto live</a> extension that allows Python to run in the web browser by using <a href="https://pyodide.org/?featured_on=pythonbytes">pyodide</a>.”</li> </ul></li> <li>Runs on anything, since it doesn’t require a local install of Python</li> <li>Running 3.12.1, looks like. Although that’s a bit hidden. Seems like it should be more visible.</li> </ul> <p><strong>Michael #3:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/astral-sh/setup-uv?featured_on=pythonbytes">setup-uv</a></p> <ul> <li>Set up your GitHub Actions workflow with a specific version of uv</li> <li>Install a version of uv and add it to PATH</li> <li>Cache the installed version of uv to speed up consecutive runs on self-hosted runners</li> <li>Register problem matchers for error output</li> <li>(Optional) Persist the uv's cache in the GitHub Actions Cache</li> <li>(Optional) Verify the checksum of the downloaded uv executable</li> </ul> <p><strong>Brian #4:</strong> <a href="https://htmlforpeople.com?featured_on=pythonbytes"><strong>HTML for people</strong></a></p> <ul> <li>Teaching HTML in a rather fun way.</li> <li>Includes basic CSS</li> </ul> <p><strong>Extras</strong> </p> <p>Michael:</p> <ul> <li>A new article: <a href="https://mkennedy.codes/posts/we-must-replace-uwsgi-with-something-else-but-with-what/?featured_on=pythonbytes">We Must Replace uWSGI With Something Else</a></li> <li><a href="https://github.com/carltongibson/django-unique-user-email?featured_on=pythonbytes">Django unique email</a> login</li> </ul> <p><strong>Joke:</strong> <a href="https://github.com/thepracticaldev/orly-full-res?featured_on=pythonbytes">So much O’Really</a></p>

October 14, 2024 08:00 AM UTC

Zato Blog

What is an API gateway?

What is an API gateway?

2024-10-14, by Dariusz Suchojad

In this article, we are going to use Zato in its capacity as a multi-protocol Python API gateway - we will integrate a few popular technologies, accepting requests sent over protocols commonly used in frontend systems, enriching and passing them to backend systems and returning responses to the API clients using their preferred data formats. But first, let's define what an API gateway is.

Clearing up the terminology

Although we will be focusing on complex API integrations later on today, to understand the term API gateway we first need to give proper consideration to the very term gateway.

What comes to mind when we hear the word "gateway", and what is correct etymologically indeed, is an opening in an otherwise impermissible barrier. We use a gateway to access that which is in other circumstances inaccessible for various reasons. We use it to leave such a place too.

In fact, both "gate" and the verb "to go" stem from the same basic root and that, again, brings to mind a notion of passing through space specifically set aside for the purpose of granting access to what normally would be unavailable. And once more, when we depart from such an area, we use a gateway too.

From the perspective of its true intended purpose, a gateway letting everyone in and out as they are would amount to little more than a hole in a wall. In other words, a gateway without a gate is not the whole story.

Yes, there is undoubtedly an immense aesthetic gratification to be drawn from being close to marvels of architecture that virtually all medieval or Renaissance gates and gateways represent, but we know that, nowadays, they do not function to the fullest of their capacities as originally intended.

Rather, we can intuitively say that a gateway is in service as a means of entry and departure if it lets its operators achieve the following, though not necessarily all at the same time, depending on one's particular needs:

We can now recognize that a gateway operates on the border of what is internal and external and in itself, it is a relatively narrow, though possibly deep, piece of an architecture. It is narrow because it is only through the gateway that entry is possible but it may be deeper or not, depending on how much it should offer to arrivals.

We also keep in mind that there may very well be more than a single gateway in existence at a time, each potentially dedicated to different purposes, some overlapping, some not.

Finally, it is crucial to remember that gateways are structural, architectural elements - what a gateway should do and how it should do it is a decision left to architects.

With all of that in mind, it is easy to transfer our understanding of what a physical gateway is into what an API one should be.

We can now define an API gateway as an element of a systems architecture that is certainly related to security, permissions and granting or rejecting access to backend systems, applications and data sources. On top of it, it may provide audit, data transformation and caching services. The definition will be always fluid to a degree, depending on an architect's vision, but this is what can be expected from it nevertheless.

Having defined what an API gateway is, let's create one in Zato and Python.

Clients and backend systems

In this article, we will integrate two frontend systems and one backend application. Frontend ones will use REST and WebSockets whereas the backend one will use AMQP. Zato will act as an API gateway between them all.

Not granting frontend API clients direct access to backend systems is usually a good idea because the dynamics involved in creation of systems on either side are typically very different. But they still need to communicate and hence the usage of Zato as an API gateway.

Python code

First, let's show the Python code that is needed to integrate the systems in our architecture:

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-

# Zato
from zato.server.service import Service

class APIGateway(Service):
    """ Dispatches requests to backend systems, enriching them along the way.
    """
    name = 'api.gateway'

    def handle(self):

        # Enrich incoming request with metadata ..
        self.request.payload['_receiver'] = self.name
        self.request.payload['_correlation_id'] = self.cid
        self.request.payload['_date_received'] = self.time.utcnow()

        # .. AMQP configuration ..
        outconn = 'My Backend'
        exchange = '/incoming'
        routing_key = 'api'

        # .. publish the message to an AMQP broker ..
        self.out.amqp.send(data, outconn, exchange, routing_key)

        # .. and return a response to our API client.
        self.response.payload = {'result': 'OK, data accepted'}

There are a couple of points of interest:

Configuration

In Zato, API clients access the platform's services using channels - let's create a channel for REST and WebSockets then.

First REST:

Now WebSockets:

We create a new outgoing AMQP connection in the same way:

Using the API gateway

At this point, the gateway is ready - you can invoke it from REST or WebSockets and any JSON data it receives will be processed by the gateway service, the AMQP broker will receive it, and API clients will have replies from the gateway as JSON responses.

Let's use curl to invoke the REST channel with JSON payload on input:

  $ curl http://api:<password-here>@localhost:11223/api/v1/user ; echo
  curl --data-binary @request.json http://localhost:11223/api/v1/user ; echo
  {"result": "OK, data accepted"}
  $

Taken together, the channels and the service allowed us to achieve this:

We can take it further. For instance, the gateway service is currently completely oblivious to the actual content of the requests.

But, since we just have a regular Python dict in self.request.payload, we can with no effort modify the service to dispatch requests to different backend systems, depending on what the request contains or possibly what other backend systems decide the destination should be.

Such additional logic is specific to each environment or project which is why it is not shown here, and this is also why we end the article at this point, but the central part of it all is already done, the rest is only a matter of customization and plugging in more channels for API clients or outgoing connections for backend systems.

Finally, it is perfectly fine to split access to systems among multiple gateways - each may handle requests from selected technologies on the one hand but on the other hand, each may use different caching or rate-limiting policies. If there is more than one, it may be easier to configure such details on a per-gateway basis.

Next steps:

➤ Read about how to use Python to build and integrate enterprise APIs that your tests will cover
➤ Python API integration tutorial
➤ Python Integration platform as a Service (iPaaS)
➤ What is an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB)? What is SOA?

More blog posts➤

October 14, 2024 08:00 AM UTC

Trey Hunner

Django and the Python 3.13 REPL

Your new Django project uses Python 3.13.

You’re really looking forward to using the new REPL… but python manage.py shell just shows the same old Python REPL. What gives?

Well, Django’s management shell uses Python’s code module to launch a custom REPL, but the code module doesn’t (yet) use the new Python REPL.

So you’re out of luck… or are you?

How stable do you need your shell command to be?

The new Python REPL’s code lives in a _pyrepl package. Surely there must be some way to launch the new REPL using that _pyrepl package!

First, note the _ before that package name. It’s _pyrepl, not pyrepl.

Any solution that relies on this module may break in future Python releases.

So… should we give up on looking for a solution, if we can’t get a “stable” one?

I don’t think so.

My shell command doesn’t usually need to be stable in more than one version of Python at a time. So I’m fine with a solution that attempts to use the new REPL and then falls back to the old REPL if it fails.

A working solution

So, let’s look at a working solution.

Stick this code in a management/commands/shell.py file within one of your Django apps:

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"""Python 3.13 REPL support using the unsupported _pyrepl module."""
from django.core.management.commands.shell import Command as BaseShellCommand


class Command(BaseShellCommand):
    shells = ["ipython", "bpython", "pyrepl", "python"]

    def pyrepl(self, options):
        from _pyrepl.main import interactive_console
        interactive_console()

How it works

Django’s shell command has made it very simple to add support for your favorite REPL of choice.

The code for the shell command loops through the shells list and attempts to run a method with that name on its own class. If an ImportError is raised then it attempts the next command, stopping once no exception occurs.

Our new command will try to use IPython and bpython if they’re installed and then it will try the new Python 3.13 REPL followed by the old Python REPL.

If Python 3.14 breaks our import by moving the interactive_console function, then an ImportError will be raised, causing us to fall back to the old REPL after we upgrade to Python 3.14 one day. If instead, the interactive_console function’s usage changes (maybe it will require arguments) then our shell command will completely break and we’ll need to manually fix it when we upgrade to Python 3.14.

What’s so great about the new REPL?

If you’re already using IPython or BPython as your REPL and you’re enjoying them, I would stick with them.

Third-party libraries move faster than Python itself and they’re often more feature-rich. IPython has about 20 years worth of feature development and it has features that the built-in Python REPL will likely never have.

If you’re using the default Python REPL though, this new REPL is a huge upgrade. I’ve been using it as my default REPL since May and I love it. See my screencast on Python 3.13 for my favorite features in the new REPL.

October 14, 2024 04:03 AM UTC

Armin Ronacher

The Inevitability of Mixing Open Source and Money

This year, one of the projects I was involved in at Sentry was the launch of The Open Source Pledge. The idea behind it is simple: companies pledge an amount proportional to the number of developers they employ to fund the Open Source projects they depend on. I have written about this before.

Since then, I've had the chance to engage in many insightful discussions about Open Source funding and licensing. In the meantime we have officially launched the pledge, and almost simultaneously WordPress entered a crisis. At the heart of that crisis is a clash between Open Source ideals and financial interests by people other than the original creators.

You might have a lot of opinions on David Heinemeier Hansson, but I encourage you to read two of his recent posts on that very topic. In Automattic is doing open source dirty David is laying out the case that Automattic has no right to impose moral obligations on beyond the scope of the license. This has been followed by Open source royalty and mad kings in which he goes deeper into the fallout that Matt Mullenweg (the creator of WordPress) is causing with his fight.

I'm largely in agreement with the posts. However I want to talk a bit about some pretty significant difference between David's opinions on Open Source funding (on which these posts appear to be based): the money element. In 2013 David wrote the following about money and Open Source:

[…] it's tempting to cash in on goodwill earned. […] It's a cliché, but once you've sold out, the goodwill might well be spent for good.

[…] part of the reason much of open source is so good, and often so superior to closed-source commercial projects, is the natural boundary of constraints. If you are not being paid or otherwise compensated directly for your work, you're less likely to needlessly embellish it. […]

—David Heinemeier Hansson, The perils of mixing open source and money

At face value, this suggests that Open Source and money shouldn’t mix, and that the absence of monetary rewards fosters a unique creative process. There's certainly truth to this, but in reality, Open Source and money often mix quickly.

If you look under the cover of many successful Open Source projects you will find companies with their own commercial interests supporting them (eg: Linux via contributors), companies outright leading projects they are also commercializing (eg: MariaDB, redis) or companies funding Open Source projects primarily for marketing / up-sell purposes (uv, next.js, pydantic, …). Even when money doesn't directly fund an Open Source project, others may still profit from it, yet often those are not the original creators. These dynamics create stresses and moral dilemmas.

I’ve said this before, but it’s no coincidence that Rails has a foundation, large conferences, a strong core team, and a trademark, while Flask has none of it. There are barriers and it takes a lot of energy and determination to push a project to a level where it can sustain itself.

Rails pushed through this barrier. I never did with any of my projects and I'm at peace with that. I got to learn a lot through my Open Source work, I achieved a certain level of notoriety that I benefit from. I built a meaningful career by leveraging my work and I even met my wonderful wife that way. All are consequences of my Open Source contributions. There were clear and indisputable benefits to it and by all accounts I'm a happy and grateful person.

But every now and then doubts creep in and I wonder if I should have done something more commercial with Flask, or if I should have pushed Rye further. As much as I love listening to Charlie talking about uv, there is also an unavoidable doubt lingering there what could have been if I dared to build out Rye with funding on my own.

Over the years, I have seen too many of my colleagues and acquaintances struggle one way or another. Psychological, mentally and professionally. Midlife crises, burnout, health, and dealing with a strong feeling of dread and disappointment. Many of this as a indirect or even direct result of their Open Source work. While projects like Rails and Laravel are great examples of successful open source stewardship, they are also outliers. Many others don't survive or grow to that level.

And yet even some of those lighthouse projects can become fallen stars and face challenges. WordPress by all accounts is a massive success. WordPress is in the top 1% of open source projects in terms of impact, success, and financial return for its creator. Yet despite that — and it finding an actual business model to commercialize it — its creator suffers from the same fate as many small Open Source libraries: a feeling of being wronged.

This is where the lines between law and morality blur. Matt feels mistreated, especially by a private equity firm, but neither trademarks nor license terms can resolve the issue for him. It’s a moral question, and sadly, Matt’s actions have alienated many who would otherwise support him. He's turning into a “mad king” and behaving immoral in his own ways.

The reality is that we humans are messy and unpredictable. We don't quite know how we will behave until we have been throw into a particular situation. Open Source walks a very fine line, and anyone claiming to have all the answers probably doesn't. I certainly don't.

Is it a wise to mix Open Source and money? Maybe not. Yet I also believe it's something that is just a reality we need to navigate. Today there are some projects too small to get any funding (xz) and there are projects large enough to find some way to sustain by funneling money to it (Rails, WordPress).

We target with the Pledge small projects in particular. It's our suggestion of how to give to projects for which the barrier to attract funding is too high. At the same time I recognize all the open questions it leaves. There are questions about tax treatments, there are questions about sustainabilty and incentives, questions about distribution and governance.

I firmly believe that the current state of Open Source and money is inadequate, and we should strive for a better one. Will the Pledge help? I hope for some projects, but WordPress has shown that we need to drive forward that conversation of money and Open Source regardless of thes size of the project.

October 14, 2024 12:00 AM UTC

October 13, 2024

Doug Hellmann

virtualenvwrapper 6.1.1

What’s new in 6.1.1? Update broken MSYS link in installation documentation (contributions by LaosLos) Add additional line to mkvirtualenv help (contributions by LaosLos) Update mkvirtualenv help to document -p/–python option (contributions by LaosLos) move linkcheck out of main doc build make sure virtualenvwrapper_cd always tries to do something, even when it cannot infer the current shell (contributions by Benjamin Mundt)

October 13, 2024 05:53 PM UTC

Real Python

Quiz: Python Thread Safety: Using a Lock and Other Techniques

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Python threading and thread safety. You’ll revisit concepts such as race conditions, thread safety issues, and synchronization primitives in the threading module. This knowledge is crucial when working with multithreaded code using Python’s threading module and ThreadPoolExecutor.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 13, 2024 12:00 PM UTC

October 11, 2024

Real Python

The Real Python Podcast – Episode #223: Exploring the New Features of Python 3.13

Python 3.13 is here! Our regular guests, Geir Arne Hjelle and Christopher Trudeau, return to discuss the new version. This year, Geir Arne coordinated a series of preview articles with members of the Real Python team and a showcase tutorial, "Python 3.13: Cool New Features for You to Try." Christopher's video course "What's New in Python 3.13" covers the topics from the article and shows the new features in action.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 11, 2024 12:00 PM UTC

ListenData

How to Automate WordPress using Python

This tutorial explains how to use Python to automate tasks in WordPress. It includes various functions to perform tasks such as creating, extracting, updating and deleting WordPress posts, pages and media items (images) directly from Python.

WordPress API Integration in Python
Table of Contents
To read this article in full, please click here
This post appeared first on ListenData

October 11, 2024 09:07 AM UTC

October 10, 2024

Real Python

Quiz: Structural Pattern Matching

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Structural Pattern Matching in Python.

You’ll revisit the syntax of the match statement and case clauses, explore various types of patterns supported by Python, and learn about guards, unions, aliases, and name binding.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 10, 2024 12:00 PM UTC

PyCharm

How I do Django APIs in PyCharm

I learn so much from watching conference talks, especially live, when I’m vibing with the crowd. But sometimes I watch and think: “Wow, I wish I could show you how awesome that would be in PyCharm.”

That just happened. Here’s the explainer, with a little special something at the end.

Hello, DjangoConf

I recently attended DjangoConf 2024 which kicked off this year’s DSF-PyCharm fundraiser. I attended Felipe’s DRF tutorial where he showed off using PyCharm and even a little bit about endpoints.

Afterwards, I ran into a PyCharm fan who told me what he really likes when using PyCharm for Django. It matched what I really like. Hence, a blog post.

The end is the point

My superfan friend was an early adopter of endpoints, our feature for rethinking the API developer experience (DX) in Django, FastAPI, and Flask. Me too. It’s cool to have a listing of endpoints, jumping to the definition, and most of all – issuing an HTTP request right there in the IDE. No going out to Postman. 

I covered endpoints and the HTTP client in my previous blog post. One extra point: he said Postman pricing is going up. I guess I should talk more about the HTTP Client.

Always be debugging

Most folks know that I’m a debugger stan, probably because I just won’t shut up about it. It turns out that he also uses the debugger first, meaning he runs the Django server, under the debugger, all the time, even when he isn’t debugging.

Why? First, it’s so fast, you don’t notice the speed hit. As he also knew, Python 3.12 lowers the impact of debugging and PyCharm uses this automatically. The bigger point though: when you want to poke around, you don’t need to stop the regular “run”, launch under “debug”, then return to “run.” That’s disruptive, so people just do print. Which makes me a sad panda.

If you’re always debugging, then poking around is already RIGHT THERE. Even if you don’t have a bug and just want to investigate. Even if you are in a template.

This is great with endpoints, as you can click a breakpoint in your code and issue a request without leaving the tool.

He made one last point – PyCharm’s Django support and debugger is more mature and polished. We’ve been doing this for a while!

I didn’t know there would be a test

There’s one more step to the higher-zen of using PyCharm to the fullest with Django. Why use the browser or an HTTP client at all? Why not just sit in a test module and let PyCharm + pytest bring joy to your world? In fact – don’t even run Django. No server process, less hassle.

Django makes it really easy to issue fake requests in a test, get the results back, and make sure things are cool. I like having my code on the left, my test on the right, and the test output on the bottom. In fact, I also like combining Always Be Testing with Always Be Debugging, which makes it crazy-easy to stop in the middle of a view and see what’s going on.

I like it so much, here’s a little video:

This works great for how code works. You can skip going to the browser, reloading, and poking around. You stay in the IDE, the flow. But there’s a catch.

Seeing is believing

Sometimes you need to see how the page looks. In the browser. With your eyeballs. Any chance PyCharm can improve the DX for this?

As it turns out, in 2023.3 we shipped Django Preview, a feature-rich browser in the IDE that keeps up as you type.

A love letter to Django

This concludes my speaking from the heart about my way of doing Django API development in PyCharm: endpoints, debugger, testing, and preview.

But I’d like to close by speaking from the heart about Django, leading with an odd little twist of fate about Django killing my project.

October 10, 2024 11:21 AM UTC

October 09, 2024

Real Python

Build a Contact Book App With Python, Textual, and SQLite

Building projects is a great way to learn programming and have fun at the same time. When you work on a project, you apply different coding skills simultaneously, which is good practice for what you’ll do in a real-life project. In this tutorial, you’ll create a contact book application with a text-based interface (TUI) based on Python and Textual. To store the contact data, your app will use an SQLite database.

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to:

  • Create the contact book app’s TUI using Textual
  • Handle the database operations using SQLite
  • Connect the app’s TUI with the database code and make it functional

At the end of this project, you’ll have a functional contact book application that will allow you to store and manage your contact information.

To get the complete source code for the application and the code for every step in this tutorial, click the link below:

Get Your Code: Click here to download the free sample code you’ll use to build a contact book app with Python, Textual, and SQLite.

Demo: A Contact Book Built With Python and Textual

Contact or address books are a widely used type of application. They can be found on phones and computers, allowing users to store and manage contact information for family, friends, coworkers, and so on.

In this tutorial, you’ll code a contact book TUI app with Python, Textual, and SQLite. Here’s a demo of how your contact book will look once you’ve followed all the steps:

Your contact book will provide a basic set of features for this type of application, and you’ll be able to display, add, and remove the information in your contacts list.

Project Overview

To build your contact book app, you’ll organize the code in a few modules under a package. In this tutorial, you’ll use the following directory structure:

rpcontacts_project/
│
├── rpcontacts/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __main__.py
│   ├── database.py
│   ├── rpcontacts.tcss
│   └── tui.py
│
├── README.md
└── requirements.txt

The root directory of your project is rpcontacts_project/. Inside, there’s an rpcontacts/ subdirectory that holds the application’s main package.

You’ll cover the content of each file in this tutorial. The name of each file will give you an idea of its role in the application.

For example, __main__.py will host the application, and database.py will provide database-related code. Similarly, rpcontacts.tcss is a CSS file that will allow you to tweak the visual style of your Textual app. Finally, tui.py will contain the code to generate the app’s TUI, including the main screen and a couple of auxiliary screens or dialogs.

Prerequisites

To get the most out of this project, you should have some previous knowledge of how to lay out a Python project and work with SQLite databases. You should also know the basics of working with Python classes. Some knowledge about writing CSS code would also be a plus.

To satisfy these knowledge requirements, you can take a look at the following resources:

Don’t worry if you don’t have all of the prerequisite knowledge before starting this tutorial—that’s completely okay! You’ll learn through the process of getting your hands dirty as you build the project. If you get stuck, then take some time to review the resources linked above. Then, get back to the code.

The contact book application you’ll build in this tutorial has a single external dependency, which is Textual. This library provides a rapid application development framework that allows you to create apps you can run in your terminal and browser.

To follow best practices in your development process, you can start by creating a virtual environment and then install Textual using pip:

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/contact-book-python-textual/ »

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 09, 2024 02:00 PM UTC

Stefanie Molin

Mind Your Image Metadata

Most devices record a variety of metadata when generating images. While some of that information *may* be innocuous, you could end up exposing the GPS coordinates to your home if you aren't careful. In this article, I provide a brief introduction to image metadata, and then show you how to remove it with `exif-stripper`.

October 09, 2024 01:00 PM UTC

PyCharm

Where To Get Data for Your Data Science Projects

Whether you’re starting a new project or expanding an existing one, as a data scientist, you’re always on the lookout for new material to explore. Knowing where to get data for data science projects can be challenging, and finding “good data” can be even more difficult. In this article, we’ll look at what makes “good data”, what format that data might be in, where to find it, and what the next steps are. 

What is “good data” for data science projects?

Firstly, we should consider how relevant the dataset is to our work. You can stumble upon lots of datasets that overlap with your work in some way, but it can be difficult to decide which is the best one for you to put your effort into. In this scenario, we’ll briefly explore some of the attributes of the data. 

To start with, how consistent is the dataset? Specifically, are there any missing values? Data might be missing for a variety of acceptable reasons, but it can also be a sign of selection bias or other factors that might skew your results. Often, we can choose to either accept missing data or delete the records that contain it before we do our analysis, but knowing about missing data early in the process can help you make an informed decision to use that dataset or not. 

Along with missing data, it’s worth checking to see if any of the data is duplicated. Duplicated data might be fine, but it might also signify a lack of consistency that could skew your results. Duplicated data might also reduce your confidence in the dataset as a whole, so it’s important to consider when choosing your dataset. 

Another aspect to consider for good data is timeliness. The time over which the data was gathered is usually pertinent to the questions you want to answer when you start analyzing it. Checking if the data was collected in the timespan that you’re interested in and considering the continuity of that timespan is helpful. 

When you’re starting your journey into data science and picking your first few datasets to play with, you don’t need to worry about picking the perfect dataset – focus on the process and exploring instead. When you’re ready to learn more about datasets and how to avoid common pitfalls, I recommend you watch this talk from Dr. Jodie Burchell – Garbage data in, garbage models out.

Do you want structured or unstructured data?

Structured data is what you’ll find in a table where each row is an observation, and each column is a variable or field. By contrast, unstructured data usually needs to be pre-processed before you can work with it in a data science project, or it can be used by specialist models that can process it internally. Examples of unstructured data include text, images, and sound. 

As you might have guessed, unstructured data is used more in advanced and specialized subfields in data science, like natural language processing and computer vision. Most data scientists start with, and continue working with, structured data for many of their projects. I recommend that this is where you start, too.

I recommend you keep the notion of structured and unstructured data in mind as we explore standard data formats.

What are standard data formats?

In addition to the quality of the data, we also have to choose between available data formats. You’ll come across two broad types of data formats as a data scientist: downloadable data (often CSV) and databases. 

Downloadable data is nearly always structured data and often takes the form of comma-separated value (CSV) files. These downloads are available from various online repositories. They are among some of the most prolific and most accessible sources of data. If you’re new to data exploration, this is the best place to get started, as they’re easy to find, human-readable, and easy to work with without any extra steps. 

If you’re ready to enter the world of databases, it’s worth understanding that they are further subdivided into relational (SQL) and non-relational (non-SQL) databases. As a broad rule, relational databases contain structured data and non-relational databases contain non-structured data, but determining whether data is structured is not an exact science. Instead, think of non-relational databases as being adaptable to the shape of the data they are storing. 

Databases are commonly used in the following cases: when you have large datasets, when multiple people need to access and modify the data simultaneously, when datasets need to be able to scale, and when data is unstructured (non-SQL only). In addition, if you’re commissioned to do data analysis for your company, you may find that you’re given a database to work with as it’s already in-house. 

PyCharm Professional has excellent support for SQL and non-SQL databases. If your work involves using various databases and writing SQL queries, you can check out our webinar on Visual SQL Development with PyCharm to get more information about the functionality. Alternatively, you can learn how to explore tables without writing a single line of SQL with PyCharm and import your dataset into PyCharm and explore it. 

Try PyCharm Professional for free

Where can I find datasets for my data science projects?

Once you’re ready to find out how to get data, there are plenty of resources you can download to use for your data science project. This is not an endless list, but it’s a good place to start and a natural progression for your data science journey.

UCI Machine Learning Repository

The UCI Machine Learning Repository has over 600 datasets covering a host of exciting topics for you to explore, such as biology, health, physics, and climate. UCI datasets also have a diverse set of data types, including images, sequential, and time series. I recommend looking at a few different datasets and types of data if you’re new to data science, as it will help you expand your understanding of what data often looks like. 

Kaggle

Another well-known website for datasets is Kaggle. Not only can you sign up to Kaggle to download datasets for data science projects, but it also has a large community of like-minded people who run company-sponsored competitions designed to help you develop your data science skills. If you’re looking for a famous dataset that you’ve seen used in numerous examples, you’ll almost certainly find it hosted on Kaggle.

Hugging Face

Hugging Face is another resource that is rich in datasets. You can filter the results by modalities, including audio, geospatial, and video, and provide a range for the size of your dataset, which can be particularly helpful when you want to start small. Hugging Face has many natural language and computer vision datasets, so you might want to head over there once you’re past the basics and interested in more specialized fields.

Many more

There are many more places that you can go on your data science journey to find fun datasets to explore. You can check out GitHub for curated open source datasets, FiveThirtyEight for datasets relating to American politics and sports, and lastly, one of my favorites, the UK government, to get datasets relating to public services and the economy in the UK. 

What are the next steps?

Congratulations! You’ve gained a better understanding of what “good data” is, and you know where to look to find datasets for data science projects. Once you’ve chosen a dataset, you’re ready to start preparing and analyzing your data. 

Remember, you can use Jupyter notebooks inside PyCharm to explore both file format and database datasets. 

You can read or watch a video showing just some of the ways you can use Jupyter notebooks inside PyCharm to boost your productivity on your data science journey with your chosen dataset. 

Try PyCharm Professional for free

October 09, 2024 09:00 AM UTC

Talk Python to Me

#480: Ahoy, Narwhals are bridging the data science APIs

If you work in data science, you definitely know about data frame libraries. Pandas is certainly the most popular, but there are others such as cuDF, Modin, Polars, Dask, and more. They are all similar but definitely not the same APIs and Polars is quite different. But here's the problem. If you want to write a library that is for users of more than one of these data frame frameworks, how do you do that? Or if you want to leave open the possibility of changing yours after the app is built, same problem. That's the problem that Narwhals solves. We have Marco Gorelli on the show to tell us all about it.<br/> <br/> <strong>Episode sponsors</strong><br/> <br/> <a href='https://talkpython.fm/workos'>WorkOS</a><br> <a href='https://talkpython.fm/training'>Talk Python Courses</a><br/> <br/> <strong>Links from the show</strong><br/> <br/> <div><b>Marco Gorelli</b>: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/@marcogorelli" target="_blank" >@marcogorelli</a><br/> <b>Marco on LinkedIn</b>: <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcogorelli/?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >linkedin.com</a><br/> <b>Narwhals</b>: <a href="https://narwhals-dev.github.io/narwhals/?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >github.io</a><br/> <b>Narwhals on Github</b>: <a href="https://github.com/narwhals-dev/narwhals?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >github.com</a><br/> <br/> <b>DuckDB</b>: <a href="https://duckdb.org?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >duckdb.org</a><br/> <b>Ibis</b>: <a href="https://ibis-project.org?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >ibis-project.org</a><br/> <b>modin</b>: <a href="https://modin.readthedocs.io/en/stable/?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >readthedocs.io</a><br/> <b>Pandas and Beyond with Wes McKinney</b>: <a href="https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/462/pandas-and-beyond-with-wes-mckinney" target="_blank" >talkpython.fm</a><br/> <b>Polars: A Lightning-fast DataFrame for Python</b>: <a href="https://talkpython.fm/episodes/show/402/polars-a-lightning-fast-dataframe-for-python-updated-audio" target="_blank" >talkpython.fm</a><br/> <b>Polars</b>: <a href="https://pola.rs?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >pola.rs</a><br/> <b>Pandas</b>: <a href="https://pandas.pydata.org?featured_on=talkpython" target="_blank" >pandas.pydata.org</a><br/> <b>Watch this episode on YouTube</b>: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSH7BZ0tuE0" target="_blank" >youtube.com</a><br/> <b>Episode transcripts</b>: <a href="https://talkpython.fm/episodes/transcript/480/ahoy-narwhals-are-bridging-the-data-science-apis" target="_blank" >talkpython.fm</a><br/> <br/> <b>--- Stay in touch with us ---</b><br/> <b>Subscribe to us on YouTube</b>: <a href="https://talkpython.fm/youtube" target="_blank" >youtube.com</a><br/> <b>Follow Talk Python on Mastodon</b>: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/web/@talkpython" target="_blank" ><i class="fa-brands fa-mastodon"></i>talkpython</a><br/> <b>Follow Michael on Mastodon</b>: <a href="https://fosstodon.org/web/@mkennedy" target="_blank" ><i class="fa-brands fa-mastodon"></i>mkennedy</a><br/></div>

October 09, 2024 08:00 AM UTC

Django Weblog

Why Django supports the Open Source Pledge

We at the Django Software Foundation are pleased to share that Sentry, alongside other partners, has launched the Open Source Pledge — an initiative designed to address sustainability challenges in open source.

The Open Source Pledge is a commitment for member companies to pay OSS maintainers meaningfully for their work. When maintainers are adequately supported, they can better sustain their projects, ensuring the growth, stability, and security of the broader ecosystem.

The sustainability challenge in the Django community

In our community and OSS at large, the challenge is real and significant. Django packages are often maintained by small teams or even individuals, often unpaid. As the demands on these projects grow, so too does the pressure on the maintainers. And without financial support, maintainers often move on without a clear succession plan. The potential failure of these projects not only impacts the developers involved but also the thousands of companies and millions of users who rely on these critical pieces of infrastructure.

Here are a few assorted examples from Django packages in the top 10 by download counts:

The case for joining the pledge

The Open Source Pledge is simple but impactful: member companies commit a minimum of $2,000 per year, per developer on staff, to support open source maintainers. Additionally, companies are encouraged to publish an annual report detailing their payments, creating transparency and accountability within the community.

We encourage companies of all sizes to join the Pledge and contribute to the sustainability of the software we all depend on. By making a financial commitment, you are not just supporting maintainers—you are investing in the stability, security, and growth of the entire tech ecosystem.

If you're interested in joining the Open Source Pledge or learning more about the sustainability issues facing OSS, please visit the initiative’s page. Together, we can build a stronger, more sustainable open source future. And if you believe in this cause, we encourage you to share this post to help broaden awareness and inspire further commitments from peers and partners.

October 09, 2024 03:26 AM UTC

October 08, 2024

PyCoder’s Weekly

Issue #650 (Oct. 8, 2024)

#650 – OCTOBER 8, 2024
View in Browser »

The PyCoder’s Weekly Logo

Differences Between Python’s Mutable and Immutable Types

In this video course, you’ll learn how Python mutable and immutable data types work internally and how you can take advantage of mutability or immutability to power your code.
REAL PYTHON course

DuckDB in the Browser With Pyodide

Learn how to run DuckDB in an in-browser Python environment to enable simple querying on remote files, interactive documentation, and easy to use training materials.
ALEX MONAHAN

Speech-to-Text With Django

alt

Looking to add new functionality to your Django app? Learn how to integrate Speech-to-Text and build a working app that transcribes audio files—with 100+ free hours to get started →
ASSEMBLY AI sponsor

Free Threaded Python With Asyncio

This post talks about combining the new experimental free threading feature of Python 3.13 with Asyncio.
CHANGS.CO.UK • Shared by Jamie Chang

Python 3.13.0 Released

PYTHON.ORG

Python 3.12.7 Released

CPYTHON DEV BLOG

Quiz: Python 3.13: Cool New Features for You to Try

REAL PYTHON

Quiz: Syntactic Sugar: Why Python Is Sweet and Pythonic

REAL PYTHON

Articles & Tutorials

Switching From virtualenvwrapper to direnv

Earlier this week Trey considered whether to switch from virtualenvwrapper to using local .venv managed by direnv. He then also started experimenting with uv and Starship. This post explains why and his new configuration.
TREY HUNNER

Ensuring a Block Is Overridden in a Django Template

Some template blocks are meant to be overloaded and forgetting to do so results in rendering bugs. This post talks about creating a new tag that throws an exception which alerts your tests if you forget to overload.
TOM CARRICK

Build Your Own AI Assistant with Edge AI

Simplify workloads and elevate customer service. Build customized AI assistants that respond to voice prompts with powerful language and comprehension capabilities - all based on your unique needs with Intel’s OpenVINO toolkit.
INTEL CORPORATION sponsor

Arrange, Act, and Assert Pattern in Testing

Learn what the Arrange, Act, and Assert (AAA) pattern is, how it works, the benefits it offers, and its role in unit test automation. Note: sample code is not in Python, but the concepts apply to all unit testing.
ANTONELLO ZANINI

How I Prepare a Technical Talk

This article outlines the system that Rodrigo uses to prepare his Python talks. Steal his ideas and suggestions so that you, too, can start giving talks at your local meetups and at PyCons all over the world.
MATHSPP.COM • Shared by Rodrigo

Implementing a Python Singleton With Decorators

A singleton pattern is one where only one instance of an object type is allowed at a time. One way to implement this concept is through the use of a decorator. This post teaches you how.
PIETER CLAERHOUT

PEP 759: External Wheel Hosting

This Python Enhancement Proposal specifies a mechanism by which projects hosted on pypi.org can safely host wheel artifacts on external sites other than PyPI.
PYTHON.ORG

Let’s Go Easy on PyPI, OK?

The use of containers can mean a lot of calls to PyPI. This post talks about caching properly to reduce the load on our shared community servers.
MICHAEL KENNEDY

Rotating Turn Order With deque

If you need to cycle through values, one way to do that is with deque. This post shows you through an example service for a game engine.
JUHA-MATTI SANTALA

Python 3.13: JIT and GIL Went Up the Hill

All you need to know about the latest Python release’s changes to the Global Interpreter Lock and Just-in-Time compilation.
DREW SILCOCK

A Dinosaur Learns poetry

“Not a real dinosaur and not real poetry.” This post is about Paul changing how what tools he uses for his Python setup.
PAUL COCHRANE

Projects & Code

pytest-xflaky: A Flaky-Test Hunter Plugin

GITHUB.COM/TESORIO • Shared by Caio Ariede

foc: A Collection of Python Functions for Somebody’s Sanity

GITHUB.COM/THYEEM

spiderweb: A Small Web Framework

GITHUB.COM/ITSTHEJOKER

pipefunc: DAGs for Scientific Workflows

GITHUB.COM/PIPEFUNC • Shared by Bas Nijholt

django-unique-user-email: Emial Logins With User Model

GITHUB.COM/CARLTONGIBSON

Events

Weekly Real Python Office Hours Q&A (Virtual)

October 9, 2024
REALPYTHON.COM

PyCon Uganda 2024

October 9 to October 14, 2024
PYCON.ORG

PyCon NL 2024

October 10 to October 11, 2024
PYCON.ORG

Python Atlanta

October 10 to October 11, 2024
MEETUP.COM

DFW Pythoneers 2nd Saturday Teaching Meeting

October 12, 2024
MEETUP.COM

PyCon MEA & Data Science 2024

October 14 to October 16, 2024
GLOBALDEVSLAM.COM

Python Brasil 2024

October 16 to October 21, 2024
PYTHONBRASIL.ORG.BR

PyCon Panamá 2024

October 16 to October 19, 2024
PYCON.PA

Swiss Python Summit 2024

October 17 to October 19, 2024
PYTHON-SUMMIT.CH

Happy Pythoning!
This was PyCoder’s Weekly Issue #650.
View in Browser »

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October 08, 2024 07:30 PM UTC

Real Python

What's New in Python 3.13

Python 3.13 was published on October 7, 2024. This new version is a major step forward for the language, although several of the biggest changes are happening under the hood and won’t be immediately visible to you.

In a sense, Python 3.13 is laying the groundwork for some future improvements, especially to the language’s performance. As you watch the course, you’ll learn more about the background for this and dive into some new features that are fully available now.

In this video course, you’ll learn about some of the improvements in the new version, including:

In this video course, you’ll explore these changes and see how this new version of Python can work for you.

If you want to try any of the examples in this video course, then you’ll need to use Python 3.13. The Python 3 Installation & Setup Guide and How Can You Install a Pre-Release Version of Python? walk you through several options for adding a new version of Python to your system.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 08, 2024 02:00 PM UTC

Quiz: Python Closures: Common Use Cases and Examples

In this quiz, you’ll test your understanding of Python closures. Closures are a common feature in functional programming languages and are particularly popular in Python because they allow you to create function-based decorators.

Take this quiz after reading our Python Closures: Common Use Cases and Examples tutorial.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

October 08, 2024 12:00 PM UTC

Django Weblog

Django bugfix release issued: 5.1.2

Today we've issued the 5.1.2 bugfix release.

The release package and checksums are available from our downloads page, as well as from the Python Package Index. The PGP key ID used for this release is Natalia Bidart: 2EE82A8D9470983E.

October 08, 2024 11:00 AM UTC

Python Software Foundation

Join the Python Developers Survey 2024: Share your experience!

This year we are conducting the eighth iteration of the official Python Developers Survey. The goal is to capture the current state of the language and the ecosystem around it. By comparing the results with last year’s, we can identify and share with everyone the hottest trends in the Python community and the key insights into it.

We encourage you to contribute to our community’s knowledge by sharing your experience and perspective. Your participation is valued! The survey should only take you about 10-15 minutes to complete.

Contribute to the Python Developers Survey 2024!


This year we aim to reach even more of our community and ensure accurate global representation by highlighting our localization efforts:


The survey is organized in partnership between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains. After the survey is over, we will publish the aggregated results and randomly choose 20 winners (among those who complete the survey in its entirety), who will each receive a $100 Amazon Gift Card or a local equivalent.

October 08, 2024 09:51 AM UTC

Mariatta

Perks of Being a Python Core Developer

Things you can get/do as a Python core developer

I’ve been a Python core developer since January 27, 2017.

Being a Python core developer comes with perks, privileges, and also responsibilities.

Sometimes I can’t tell whether something is a perk, or a privilege, or a responsibility. I think depends on who you’re talking to, they might see it as an optional nice thing they could get/do, but the same thing might be seen as burden responsibility to others.

October 08, 2024 08:00 AM UTC

Julien Tayon

Bidirectionnal python/tk by talking to tk interpreter back and forth

Last time I exposed an old way learned in physical labs to do C or python/tk like in the old days: by summoning a tcl/tk interpreter and piping commands to it.

But what fun is it?

It's funnier if the tcl/tk interperpreter talks back to python :D as an hommage to the 25 years awaited TK9 versions that solves a lot of unicode trouble.

Beforehand, to make sense to the code a little warning is required : this code targets only POSIX environment and loses portability because I chose to use a way that is not the « one best way » for enabling bidirectionnal talks. By using os.set_blocking(p.stdout.fileno(), False) we can have portable non blocking IO, which means this trick has been tested on linux, freeBSD and windows successfully. It's pretty much advised when using non blocking IO to use select.select to check if file descriptors are ready to use.

First and foremost, the Popen now use p.stdout=PIPE enabling the channel on which tcl will talk. As a joke puts/gets are named from tcl/tk functions and are used in python to push/get strings from tcl.

Instead of using multithreading having one thread listen to the output and putting the events in a local queue that the main thread will consume I chose the funniest technique of setting tcl/tk output non blocking which does not work on windows. This is the fnctl part of the code.

Then, I chose not to parse the output of tcl/tk but exec it, making tcl/tk actually push python commands back to python. That's the exec part of the code.

For this I needed an excuse : so I added buttons to change minutes/hours back and forth.

That's the moment we all are gonna agree that tcl/tk that tcl/tk biggest sin is its default look. Don't worry, next part is about using themes.

Compared to the first post, changes are minimal :D This is how it should look :

And here is the code, largely still below 100 sloc (by 3 lines). 
#!/usr/bin/env python
from subprocess import Popen, PIPE
from time import sleep, time, localtime
import select
# import fcntl
import os

# let's talk to tk/tcl directly through p.stdin
p = Popen(['wish'], stdin=PIPE, stdout=PIPE)

# best non portable answer on stackoverflow
#fd = p.stdout.fileno()
#flag = fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_GETFL)
#fcntl.fcntl(fd, fcntl.F_SETFL, flag | os.O_NONBLOCK)
# ^-- this 3 lines can be replaced with this one liner --v
# portable non blocking IO
os.set_blocking(p.stdout.fileno(), False)

def puts(s):
    for l in s.split("\n"):
        select.select([], [p.stdin], [])
        p.stdin.write((l + "\n").encode())
        p.stdin.flush()

def gets():
    ret=p.stdout.read()
    p.stdout.flush()
    return ret

WIDTH=HEIGHT=400

puts(f"""
canvas .c -width {WIDTH} -height {HEIGHT} -bg white
pack .c
. configure -background white

ttk::button  .ba -command {{  puts ch-=1 }} -text <<
pack .ba -side left   -anchor w
ttk::button .bb -command {{  puts cm-=1 }} -text  <
pack .bb -side left -anchor w
ttk::button .bc -command {{  puts ch+=1 }} -text >> 
pack .bc  -side right -anchor e
ttk::button .bd -command {{  puts cm+=1 }} -text > 
pack .bd  -side right -anchor e
""")

# Constant are CAPitalized in python by convention
from cmath import  pi as PI, e as E
ORIG=complex(WIDTH/2, HEIGHT/2)

# correcting python notations j => I  
I = complex("j")
rad_per_sec = 2.0 * PI /60.0
rad_per_min = rad_per_sec / 60
rad_per_hour = rad_per_min / 12

origin_vector_hand = WIDTH/2 *  I

size_of_sec_hand = .9
size_of_min_hand = .8
size_of_hour_hand = .65

rot_sec = lambda sec : -E ** (I * sec * rad_per_sec )
rot_min = lambda min : -E ** (I *  min * rad_per_min )
rot_hour = lambda hour : -E ** (I * hour * rad_per_hour )

to_real = lambda c1,c2 : "%f %f %f %f" % (c1.real,c1.imag,c2.real, c2.imag)
for n in range(60):
    direction= origin_vector_hand * rot_sec(n)
    start=.9 if n%5 else .85
    puts(f".c create line {to_real(ORIG+start*direction,ORIG+.95*direction)}")
    sleep(.01)

diff_offset_in_sec = (time() % (24*3600)) - \
    localtime()[3]*3600 -localtime()[4] * 60.0 \
    - localtime()[5] 
ch=cm=0
while True:
    # eventually parsing tcl output 
    back = gets()
    # trying is more concise than checking
    try:
        back = back.decode()
        exec(back)
    except Exception as e:
        pass

    t = time()
    s= t%60
    m = m_in_sec = t%(60 * 60) + cm * 60
    h = h_in_sec = (t- diff_offset_in_sec)%(24*60*60) + ch * 3600 + cm * 60
    puts(".c delete second")
    puts(".c delete minute")
    puts(".c delete hour")
    c0=ORIG+ -.1 * origin_vector_hand * rot_sec(s)
    c1=ORIG+ size_of_sec_hand * origin_vector_hand * rot_sec(s)
    puts( f".c create line {to_real(c0,c1)} -tag second -fill blue -smooth true")
    c1=ORIG+size_of_min_hand * origin_vector_hand * rot_min(m)
    puts(f".c create line {to_real(ORIG, c1)} -tag minute -fill green -smooth true")
    c1=ORIG+size_of_hour_hand * origin_vector_hand * rot_hour(h)
    puts(f".c create line {to_real(ORIG,c1)} -tag hour -fill red -smooth true")
    puts("flush stdout")
    sleep(.1)

Some history about this code.



I have been mentored in a physical lab where we where doing the pipe, fork, dup2 dance to tcl/tk from C to give a nice output to our simulations so we could control our instuition was right and could extract pictures for the publications. This is a trick that is almost as new as my arteries.
My mentor used to say : we are not coders, we need stuff to work fast and neither get drowned in computer complexity or endless quest for « the one best way » nor being drowned in bugs, we aim for the Keep It Simple Stupid Ways.

Hence, this is a Keep It Simple Stupid approach that I revived for the sake of seeing if it was still robust after 35 years without using it.

Well, if it's robust and it's working: it ain't stupid even if it isn't the « one best idiomatic way ». :P

October 08, 2024 01:53 AM UTC

October 07, 2024

Python Morsels

Python 3.13's best new features

Python 3.13 comes with a brand new REPL and improvements to virtual environments and the Python debugger.

Table of contents

  1. Important but not my favorite
  2. The New Python REPL
  3. Git-friendly virtual environments
  4. Python Debugger improvements
  5. Try out Python 3.13

Important but not my favorite

First, I'd like to note that I'm not going to talk about the experimental free-threaded mode, the experimental just-in-time compilation option, or many other features that don't affect most Python developers today.

Instead, let's focus on some of the more fun things.

The New Python REPL

My favorite feature by far …

Read the full article: https://www.pythonmorsels.com/python-313-whats-new/

October 07, 2024 05:30 PM UTC