Book Image

Modular Programming with Python

By : Erik Westra
Book Image

Modular Programming with Python

By: Erik Westra

Overview of this book

Python has evolved over the years and has become the primary choice of developers in various fields. The purpose of this book is to help readers develop readable, reliable, and maintainable programs in Python. Starting with an introduction to the concept of modules and packages, this book shows how you can use these building blocks to organize a complex program into logical parts and make sure those parts are working correctly together. Using clearly written, real-world examples, this book demonstrates how you can use modular techniques to build better programs. A number of common modular programming patterns are covered, including divide-and-conquer, abstraction, encapsulation, wrappers and extensibility. You will also learn how to test your modules and packages, how to prepare your code for sharing with other people, and how to publish your modules and packages on GitHub and the Python Package Index so that other people can use them. Finally, you will learn how to use modular design techniques to be a more effective programmer.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
Modular Programming with Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Index

Package configuration


As you develop more sophisticated modules and packages, you will often find that your code needs to be configured in some way before it can be used. For example, imagine that you're writing a package that uses a database. To do this, your package needs to know which database engine to use, the name of the database, and the username and password to use to access that database.

You could hardwire this information into your program's source code, but doing this is a very bad idea, for two reasons:

  • Different computers and different operating systems will use different database setups. Since the information used to access the database will vary from one computer to another, anyone wanting to use your package would have to edit the source code directly to enter the correct database details before the package can be run.

  • The username and password used to access a database is highly sensitive information. If you share your package with other people, or even just store a copy of...