Book Image

Mastering Python

By : Rick van Hattem
Book Image

Mastering Python

By: Rick van Hattem

Overview of this book

Python is a dynamic programming language. It is known for its high readability and hence it is often the first language learned by new programmers. Python being multi-paradigm, it can be used to achieve the same thing in different ways and it is compatible across different platforms. Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, easy to maintain, and reuse is not so straightforward. This book is an authoritative guide that will help you learn new advanced methods in a clear and contextualised way. It starts off by creating a project-specific environment using venv, introducing you to different Pythonic syntax and common pitfalls before moving on to cover the functional features in Python. It covers how to create different decorators, generators, and metaclasses. It also introduces you to functools.wraps and coroutines and how they work. Later on you will learn to use asyncio module for asynchronous clients and servers. You will also get familiar with different testing systems such as py.test, doctest, and unittest, and debugging tools such as Python debugger and faulthandler. You will learn to optimize application performance so that it works efficiently across multiple machines and Python versions. Finally, it will teach you how to access C functions with a simple Python call. By the end of the book, you will be able to write more advanced scripts and take on bigger challenges.
Table of Contents (22 chapters)
Mastering Python
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
6
Generators and Coroutines – Infinity, One Step at a Time
Index

Introducing the asyncio library


The asyncio library was created to make asynchronous processing much easier and results more predictable. It was introduced with the purpose of replacing the asyncore module, which has been available for a very long time (since Python 1.5 in fact). The asyncore module was never very usable, which prompted the creation of the gevent and eventlet third-party libraries. Both gevent and eventlet make asynchronous programming much easier than asyncore ever did, but I feel that both have been made largely obsolete with the introduction of asyncio. Even though I have to admit that asyncio still has quite a few rough edges, it is in very active development, which makes me think that all the rough edges will soon be fixed by either the core Python library or third-party wrappers.

The asyncio library was officially introduced for Python 3.4, but a back port for Python 3.3 is available through the Python Package Index. With that in mind, while some portions of this chapter...