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

Creating new kinds of collections

We'll look at some extensions we might make to Python's built-in container classes. We won't show an example of extending each container.

We'll pick an example of extending a specific container and see how the process works:

  1. Define the requirements. This may include research on Wikipedia, generally starting here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_structure. Designs of data structures often involve complex edge cases around missing items and duplicate items.
  2. If necessary, look at the collections.abc module to see what methods must be implemented to create the new functionality.
  3. Create some test cases. This also requires careful study of the algorithms to ensure that the edge cases are properly covered.
  4. Write code based on the previous research steps.

We need to emphasize the importance of researching the fundamentals before...