Python Weekly #5 : Batteries Included - 5 Standard Library Packages every python developer should know

Batteries Included

5 Standard Library Packages every python developer should know

One of the reasons that python is incredibly popular is that as a language it is relatively fully formed out of the box. By fully formed I mean that many of the low level, and even medium level functionality is already developed and included in the Standard Library (this is what is often referred to as Batteries Included). The Standard Library is also very well documented for all versions of python - so it is difficult to go wrong.

It is also often the case that even if the standard library doesn't include what you need - someone else may have already published what you need : (See the pyPi - Python Package Index - for a complete list of everything that has been published by other developer - 69350 packages so far. It can be tricky to search if you aren't sure exactly how to describe what you need).

In this blog I am going to summarise 5 packages within the standard library that every developer should learn - in no particular order

re : Regular expression matching

Many applications will require some form of text proceesing, and if you have to go any more complex than finding a simple string in a piece of input, then you should learn how to use regular expressions - as implemented by the re module.
Regular expressions are a fantastic way to fuzzy search a text string, and extract sections of the text. In a future blog post I will cover the module in more detail.
Despite the power of regular expressions, some text problems are not really conducive to using regular expressions - for instance parsing XML, HTML or CSS : In these cases it is far better to use dedicated libraries to parse those types of input.
A word of warning though : regular expressions are very powerful, and can be complex. They will take time to learn and even longer to master - they are worth it - there are plenty of tutorials available.

datetime : Manipulation of dates and time stamps

Why bother with datetime ? -  very simply (unless you are asked to do it as a college assignment) life is far too short to try to write your own module to handle date and times. Seemingly simple rules can become very complex when you have to take into account leap years, leap seconds, time zones, different formats, and all the other nuances. Don't make the effort, even to write a simple module, when the datetime module (and it's partners calendar) already exist, and are known to work.

logging : flexible event logging system

The logging module is a flexible and standard method for getting useful information from your application, instead of including lots of print statements/functions in your code while developing, and then removing them before delivery (and risking breaking your code). With the logging module in use - just change your logging level - and your debug logging will cease - although the best way to debug is to actually use a debugger, in combination with your logging information, and of course your automated test cases.

argparse : Command line argument parse

Many complex applications will support a command line with one or more options and arguments. The argparse package within the standard library contains all the tools you need to parse the command line and extract the arguments and options. You will need to write code to identify invalid combinations, or invalid arguments, although in many cases this should not be that complex.

unittest : A unit testing framework

I mentioned in my previous blog post : 10 things to learn as a python developer, and again in : Incremental Development, it is vital that you use some technique to allow you to run a consistent set of tests against your code, to ensure that it works and continues to work as you develop it. There are plenty of mechanisms that do this, but I would strongly recommend that you use unittest, a very powerful set of tools which allow you to manage and execute your tests.