Book Image

Python Automation Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Jaime Buelta
Book Image

Python Automation Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Jaime Buelta

Overview of this book

In this updated and extended version of Python Automation Cookbook, each chapter now comprises the newest recipes and is revised to align with Python 3.8 and higher. The book includes three new chapters that focus on using Python for test automation, machine learning projects, and for working with messy data. This edition will enable you to develop a sharp understanding of the fundamentals required to automate business processes through real-world tasks, such as developing your first web scraping application, analyzing information to generate spreadsheet reports with graphs, and communicating with automatically generated emails. Once you grasp the basics, you will acquire the practical knowledge to create stunning graphs and charts using Matplotlib, generate rich graphics with relevant information, automate marketing campaigns, build machine learning projects, and execute debugging techniques. By the end of this book, you will be proficient in identifying monotonous tasks and resolving process inefficiencies to produce superior and reliable systems.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
14
Other Books You May Enjoy
15
Index

Using templates for reports

While plain text can convey a lot of information, to generate better reports, we need a system where styling can be added to the text. Details such as bold text, bullet points, and images can make a difference. As all browsers work with HTML, generating reports in this format is a good option. Everyone is familiar with a browser rendering text.

HTML is a very flexible format that can be used to render rich text and reports. While an HTML template can be managed as pure plain text, doing so is very error prone and tedious. There are tools that allow you to add better handling of structured text and define templates.

This also detaches the template from the code, separating the generation of the data from the representation of that data. The styling of the template can be done separately by specialized designers, making it look great.

Getting ready

The tool used in this recipe, Jinja2, reads a file that contains the template...