Book Image

Mastering Python 2E - Second Edition

By : Rick van Hattem
5 (1)
Book Image

Mastering Python 2E - Second Edition

5 (1)
By: Rick van Hattem

Overview of this book

Even if you find writing Python code easy, writing code that is efficient, maintainable, and reusable is not so straightforward. Many of Python’s capabilities are underutilized even by more experienced programmers. Mastering Python, Second Edition, is an authoritative guide to understanding advanced Python programming so you can write the highest quality code. This new edition has been extensively revised and updated with exercises, four new chapters and updates up to Python 3.10. Revisit important basics, including Pythonic style and syntax and functional programming. Avoid common mistakes made by programmers of all experience levels. Make smart decisions about the best testing and debugging tools to use, optimize your code’s performance across multiple machines and Python versions, and deploy often-forgotten Python features to your advantage. Get fully up to speed with asyncio and stretch the language even further by accessing C functions with simple Python calls. Finally, turn your new-and-improved code into packages and share them with the wider Python community. If you are a Python programmer wanting to improve your code quality and readability, this Python book will make you confident in writing high-quality scripts and taking on bigger challenges
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
19
Other Books You May Enjoy
20
Index

Testing with py.test

The py.test tool makes it very easy to write tests and run them. There are a few other options such as nose2 and the bundled unittest module available, but the py.test library offers a very good combination of usability and active development. In the past, I was an avid nose user but have since switched to py.test as it tends to be easier to use and has better community support, in my experience at least. Regardless, nose2 is still a good choice, and if you’re already using either nose or nose2, there is little reason to switch and rewrite all of your tests. When writing tests for a new project, however, py.test can be much more convenient.

Now, we will run the doctests from the previously discussed square.py file using py.test.

First, start by installing py.test, of course:

$ pip3 install pytest pytest-flake8

We also installed pytest-flake8 here because the default pytest.ini for this project depends on it. We will discuss what...