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

Extensible modules


Most of the time, the functionality provided by a module is known in advance. The module's source code implements a well-defined set of behavior, and that is all the module does. In some situations, however, you may need a module where the behavior of the module is not completely defined at the time you write it. Other parts of your system can extend the behavior of the module in various ways. Modules that are designed to be extended are called extensible modules.

One of the great things about Python is that it is a dynamic language. You don't need to define and compile all your code before it will run. This makes it easy to create extensible modules using Python.

In this section, we will look at three different ways in which a module can be made extensible: through the use of dynamic imports, by writing plugins, and using hooks.

Dynamic imports

In the previous chapter, we created a module called renderers.py which selected an appropriate renderer module to draw a chart...