Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By : Sulekha AloorRavi
Book Image

Metaprogramming with Python

By: Sulekha AloorRavi

Overview of this book

Effective and reusable code makes your application development process seamless and easily maintainable. With Python, you will have access to advanced metaprogramming features that you can use to build high-performing applications. The book starts by introducing you to the need and applications of metaprogramming, before navigating the fundamentals of object-oriented programming. Next, you will learn about simple decorators, work with metaclasses, and later focus on introspection and reflection. You’ll also delve into generics and typing before defining templates for algorithms. As you progress, you will understand your code using abstract syntax trees and explore method resolution order. This Python book also shows you how to create your own dynamic objects before structuring the objects through design patterns. Finally, you will learn simple code-generation techniques along with discovering best practices and eventually building your own applications. By the end of this learning journey, you’ll have acquired the skills and confidence you need to design and build reusable high-performing applications that can solve real-world problems.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
1
Part 1: Fundamentals – Introduction to Object-Oriented Python and Metaprogramming
4
Part 2: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming I
11
Part 3: Deep Dive – Building Blocks of Metaprogramming II

An overview of design patterns

Every programming language has its elements uniquely designed and communicated to others. Design patterns give a structured and well-designed approach to developing software or applications in Python. In Python, every element is an object. Design patterns express how we are going to sequence or structure these objects to perform various operations. This allows them to become reusable.

The design patterns are divided into three categories – behavioral, structural, and creational. In this chapter, we will cover behavioral design patterns and look at three in particular, as follows:

  • The chain of responsibility
  • Command
  • Strategy

More than 20 different design patterns are available in Python and covering all of them would require a book of its own. Therefore, we will only focus on some of the most interesting design patterns in this chapter and the next. With that, let’s explore some behavioral design patterns.