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
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17
Index

Managing arguments and configuration in composite applications

When we have a complex suite (or system) of individual applications, it's common for several applications to share common features. When we have completely separate applications, external Command-Line Interfaces (CLIs) are is tied directly to the software architecture. It becomes awkward to refactor the software components because changes will also alter the visible CLI.

The coordination of common features among many applications can become awkward. As a concrete example, imagine defining the various, one-letter abbreviated options for command-line arguments. We might want all of our applications to use -v for verbose output: this is an example of an option that would require careful coordination. Ensuring that there are no conflicts might require keeping some kind of master list of options, outside all of the individual applications.

This kind of common configuration should be kept in only one place in the...