Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Book Image

Secret Recipes of the Python Ninja

Overview of this book

This book covers the unexplored secrets of Python, delve into its depths, and uncover its mysteries. You’ll unearth secrets related to the implementation of the standard library, by looking at how modules actually work. You’ll understand the implementation of collections, decimals, and fraction modules. If you haven’t used decorators, coroutines, and generator functions much before, as you make your way through the recipes, you’ll learn what you’ve been missing out on. We’ll cover internal special methods in detail, so you understand what they are and how they can be used to improve the engineering decisions you make. Next, you’ll explore the CPython interpreter, which is a treasure trove of secret hacks that not many programmers are aware of. We’ll take you through the depths of the PyPy project, where you’ll come across several exciting ways that you can improve speed and concurrency. Finally, we’ll take time to explore the PEPs of the latest versions to discover some interesting hacks.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
Packt Upsell
Foreword
Contributors
Preface
Index

Examples of decorators


Frameworks, such as for web development or graphical interface design, frequently have decorators to automate functionality for a developer. While a developer can access parts of a framework directly, such as modules and functions, using decorators to facilitate this process makes a programmer's life easier.

For example, many web frameworks include a decorator, @login_required, to ensure that a user is authenticated with the website before being allowed to do anything on the site. While login and authentication capabilities could be coded by the developer, the framework includes that functionality because it is such an integral part of how websites work. 

Because it is such an important part of website functionality and is frequently used, having a well-developed authentication method should be provided by the framework. Much like cryptography, leaving it up to developers to properly implement can lead to trouble, as it is easier to do it wrong than to do it right.

Getting...