Intro
I mostly transitioned from perl to python programming. I resisted for the longest time, but now I would never go back. I realized something. I was never really good at Perl. What I was good at were the regular expressions. So Perl for me was just a framework to write RegExes. But Perl code looks ugly with all those semicolons. Python is neater and therefore more legible at a glance. Python also has more libraries to pick from. Data structures in Perl were just plain ugly. I never mastered the syntax. I think I got it now in Python, which is a huge timesaver – I don’t have to hit the books every time I have a complex data structure.
I will probably find these tips useful and will improve upon them as I find better ways to do things. It’s mostly for my own reference, but maybe someone else will find them handy. I use maybe 5% of python? As I need additional things I’ll throw thm in here.
What is this object?
Say you have an object <obj> and want to know what type it is because you’re a little lost. Do:
print(<obj>.__class__)
Check if this key exists in this dict
if “model” in thisdict:
Remove key from dict
if “model” in thisdict: del thisdict[“model”]
Copy (assign) one dict to another
Do not use dict2 = dict1! That is accepted, syntactically, but won’t work as you expect. Instead do this:
dict2 = dict1.copy()
Multiple assignments in on line
a,b,c = “hi”,23,”there”
Key and value from a single line
for itemid,val in itemvals.items():
Formatting
I guess it is pretty common to use a space-based (not tab) indent of four spaces for each subsequent code block.
Initializing lists and dicts
alist = []
adict = {}
Test for an empty list or empty dict or empty string
if not alist: print(“empty list”)
if not adict: print(“the dict adict is empty”)
astring=””
if not astring: print("the string is empty")
Length of a list
len(alist)
Merge two lists together
for elmnt in list2: list1.append(elmnt)
Address first/last element in a list
alist[0] # first element
alist[-1] # last element
First/Last two characters in a string
astring[:2]
astring[-2:]
Conditional operators
if a == b: print(“equals”)
if re.search(r’eq’,a):
do something
elif re.search(r’newstring’,a):
do something else
else:
etc.
Order of evaluation of conditionals and max value of a dictionary
a = {‘hi’:0,’there’:1,’man’:2}
if not a or max(a.values()) < 3: do something
Is the above expression safe to evaluate in the case where the dict a is defined but empty? Answer: yes, it is! Although by itself max(a.values()) would produce an error, in this or conditional, execution, I guess, never reaches that statement because the first statement evaluates as True. Same reasoning applies if the boolean operator is and.
Ternary operator
I don’t think is well-developed in Python and shouldn’t be used (my opinion).
++ operator? Doesn’t exist. += and its ilk does, however.
Boolean variables + multiple assignment example
a, b=True, False
if a==b: print(“equals”)
if a: print(“a is true”)
Reduce number of lines in the program
for n in range(12): colors[n] = ‘red’
if not mykey in mydict: mydict[mykey] = []
Printing stuff while developing
print(“mydict”,mydict,flush=True)
Python figures it out how to print your object, whatever type it is, which is cool. That flush=True is needed if you want to see our output which you’ve redirected to a file right away! Otherwise it gets buffered.
Reading and writing files – prettyify.py
import requests, json, sys, os
import sys,json
from pathlib import Path
aql_file = sys.argv[1]
aql_path = Path(aql_file)
json_file = str(aql_path.with_suffix('.json'))
# Script path
dir_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.realpath(__file__))
dir_path_files = dir_path + "/files/"
# make ugly json file prettier
# this is kind of a different example, mixed in there
file = sys.argv[1]
f = open(file)
# return json obj as dict
fjson = json.load(f)
nicer = json.dumps(fjson,indent=4)
print(nicer,flush=True)
# back to original example
f = open(dir_path_files + json_file,'w+')
f.write(body)
f.close()
Reading in command-line arguments
Reading in a boolean value
python pgm.py False
So, you could use argparse, but I chose ast. Then I have a line in the script:
import ast overwrite_s = sys.argv[1] # either True of False - whether to overwrite or not overwrite = ast.literal_eval(overwrite_s)
Nota Bene that if you fail to take these steps your argument will be read in as a string, not a boolean!
See Reading and Writing files example.
Command line tips
The command line is your friend and should be used for little tests. Moreover, you can print an object without even a print statement.
>>>a =[1,’hi’,3]
>>>a
Going from byte object to string
s_b = b’string’
s = s_b.decode(‘utf-8’)
Test if object is a string
if type(thisobject) == str: print(“It is a string”)
Python as a calculator
I always used python command line as a calculator, even ebfore I knew the language syntax! It’s very handy.
>>> 5 + 6/23
Breaking out of a for loop
Use the continue statement after testing a condition to skip remaining block and continue onto next iteration. Use the break to completely skip out of this loop.
Executing shell commands
import os
os.system(“ls -l”)
But, to capture the output, you can use the subprocess package.
Generate (pseudo-)random numbers
import random
a = random.random()
Accessing environment variables
os.environ[‘ENV_TOKEN’]
Handling glob (wildcards) in your shell command
import glob
for query_results_file in glob.glob(os.path.join(dir_path_files,OSpattern)): print(“query_results_file”,query_results_file)
But, if you want the results in the same order as the shell gives, put a sorted() around that. Otherwise the results come out randomly.
JSON tips
Python is great for reading and writing JSON files.
# Load inventory file
with open(dir_path_files + inventory_file) as inventory_file:
inventory_json = json.load(inventory_file)
sitenoted={'gmtOffset':jdict["gmtOffset"],'timezoneId':jdict["timezoneId"]}# update inventory with custom field Site Notes – put GMT
sitenote=json.dumps(sitenoted,indent=4)
print("sitenote",sitenote)Convert a string which basically is in json format to a Python data structure
import json txt_d = json.loads(response.text)
Test for null in JSON value
You may see “mykey”:null in your json values. How to test for that?
if my_dict[mykey] == None: continue
RegExes
Although supported in Python, seems kind of ugly. Many RegExes will need to prefaced with r (raw), or else you’ll get yourself into trouble, as in
import re
r'[a-z]{4}.\s*\w(abc|def)’
if re.search(‘EGW-‘,locale): continue
b = re.sub(‘ ‘,’-‘,locale)
b = re.split(r’\s’,’a b c d e f’)
Minimalist URL example
import urllib.request
urllib.request.urlopen(‘https://drjohnstechtalk.com/’).read()
Function arguments: are they passed by reference or by value?
This section needs more research and may be inaccurate or simply wrong! By reference for complex objects like a dict (not sure about a list), but by value for a simple object like a Boolean! I got burned by this. I wanted a Boolean to persist across a function call. In the end I simple stuffed it into a dict! And that worked. But python doesn’t use that terminology. But it means you can pass your complex data structure, say a list of dicts of dicts, start appending to the list in your function, and the calling program has access to the additional members.
Print to a string a la sprintf
In python 3.6 and later you have the f-format which is way cool. Stuff between curly braces gets evaluated in place. Say a = 3 and b = ‘man’, then
str = f"first some text mixed with value of a, which is {a} and the text of b, which is {b}"
So no need to paste a string together with awkward combos of strings, plus signs and variables!
Excel files
I’ve been using the package openpyxl quite successfully to read and write Excel files but I see that pandas also has built-in functions to read spreadsheets.
Math
numpy seems to be the go-to package.
Can a keyword be a variable?
Yes. Here’s an example.
timeunit = ‘days’
numbr = 3
datetime.now() + timedelta(**{timeunit: numbr})
Python and self-signed certificates, or certificates issued by private CAs
I updated this blog article to help address that: Adding private root CAs in Redhat or SLES or Debian.
Write it with style
Use flake8 to see if your python program conforms to the best practice style. In CentOS I installed flake8 using pip while in Debian linux I installed it using apt-get install flake8.
Does it at least pass the compiler – check syntax without running it
Install pyflakes: pip3 install pyflakes. Then
pyflakes your_script.py
Can I modify a Python script while its running?
Sure. No worries. It is safe to do so.
Create virtual environment for portability
I like to call my virtual environment venv.
virtualenv venv
Use this virtual environment
source ./venv/bin/activate
List all the packages in this virtual environment
Good portable development style would have you install the minimal set of packages in your virtual environment and then build a requirements.txt file:
pip3 freeze > requirements.txt
Leave this virtual environment
deactivate
Conclusion
I’ve written down some of my favorite tips for using python effectively.