Book Image

Mastering Object-Oriented Python - Second Edition

By : Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Mastering Object-Oriented Python - Second Edition

By: Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a relatively complex discipline to master, and it can be difficult to see how general principles apply to each language's unique features. With the help of the latest edition of Mastering Objected-Oriented Python, you'll be shown how to effectively implement OOP in Python, and even explore Python 3.x. Complete with practical examples, the book guides you through the advanced concepts of OOP in Python, and demonstrates how you can apply them to solve complex problems in OOP. You will learn how to create high-quality Python programs by exploring design alternatives and determining which design offers the best performance. Next, you'll work through special methods for handling simple object conversions and also learn about hashing and comparison of objects. As you cover later chapters, you'll discover how essential it is to locate the best algorithms and optimal data structures for developing robust solutions to programming problems with minimal computer processing. Finally, the book will assist you in leveraging various Python features by implementing object-oriented designs in your programs. By the end of this book, you will have learned a number of alternate approaches with different attributes to confidently solve programming problems in Python.
Table of Contents (25 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Section 1: Tighter Integration Via Special Methods
11
Section 2: Object Serialization and Persistence
17
Section 3: Object-Oriented Testing and Debugging

Using XML files – PLIST and others

As we noted in Chapter 10, Serializing and Saving – JSON, YAML, Pickle, CSV, and XML, Python's xml package includes numerous modules that parse the XML files. Because of the wide adoption of the XML files, it often becomes necessary to convert between XML documents and Python objects. Unlike JSON or YAML, the mapping from XML is not simple.

One common way to represent the configuration data in XML is the PLIST file. For more information on the PLIST format, you can refer to https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/PropertyLists/Introduction/Introduction.html.

Macintosh users with XCode installed can perform man plist to see extensive documentation on the XML-based format. The advantage of the PLIST format is that it uses a few, very general tags. This makes it easy to create PLIST files and...