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

Summary


In this chapter, we looked at the details of how Python modules and packages work. We saw that modules are simply Python source files that get imported using an import statement, and that packages are directories of Python source files identified by a package initialization file named __init__.py. We learned that packages can be defined inside other packages to form a tree-like structure of nested packages. We looked at how modules and packages can be initialized, and how the import statement can be used in various ways to import modules and packages, and their contents, into your programs.

We then saw how relative imports can be used to import modules relative to your current position in the package hierarchy and how the __all__ variable can be used to control what gets included in an import.

We then learned about circular dependencies and how to avoid them, and we finished by learning about chameleon modules, which can act as both importable modules and as standalone programs that...