Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook - Second Edition

By : Steven F. Lott
Book Image

Modern Python Cookbook - Second Edition

By: Steven F. Lott

Overview of this book

Python is the preferred choice of developers, engineers, data scientists, and hobbyists everywhere. It is a great language that can power your applications and provide great speed, safety, and scalability. It can be used for simple scripting or sophisticated web applications. By exposing Python as a series of simple recipes, this book gives you insight into specific language features in a particular context. Having a tangible context helps make the language or a given standard library feature easier to understand. This book comes with 133 recipes on the latest version of Python 3.8. The recipes will benefit everyone, from beginners just starting out with Python to experts. You'll not only learn Python programming concepts but also how to build complex applications. The recipes will touch upon all necessary Python concepts related to data structures, object oriented programming, functional programming, and statistical programming. You will get acquainted with the nuances of Python syntax and how to effectively take advantage of it. By the end of this Python book, you will be equipped with knowledge of testing, web services, configuration, and application integration tips and tricks. You will be armed with the knowledge of how to create applications with flexible logging, powerful configuration, command-line options, automated unit tests, and good documentation.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
16
Other Books You May Enjoy
17
Index

Parsing the query string in a request

A URL is a complex object. It contains at least six separate pieces of information. More information can be included via optional elements.

A URL such as http://127.0.0.1:5000/dealer/hand/?cards=13&$format=json has several fields:

  • http is the scheme. https is for secure connections using encrypted sockets.
  • 127.0.0.1 can be called the authority, although "network location" is a more common term. Sometimes it's called the host. This particular IP address means the localhost and is a kind of loopback to your computer. The name localhost maps to this IP address.
  • 5000 is the port number and is part of the authority.
  • /dealer/hand/ is the path to a resource.
  • cards=13&$format=json is a query string, and it's separated from the path by the ? character.

The query string can be quite complex. While not an official standard, it's possible (and common) for a query string to have...