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

Chapter 14: Generating Code from AST

In this chapter, we will learn how to use ASTs in Python to generate code for various applications. We will apply these abstract syntax trees to metaprogramming to implement automatic code generated in this chapter.

Automatic code generation is one way of making the life of a programmer easier. An abstract syntax tree is an excellent functionality that can help us generate code in a much simpler way.

The concept of AST is discussed with examples in Chapter 9 of this book. In this chapter, we will be tapping the advantages of ASTs to generate code automatically. Code generation can be implemented to enable no-code or limited coding while developing applications. In this chapter, we will continue to use the example of ABC Megamart to generate code from ASTs.

In this chapter, we will be looking at the following main topics:

  • Generating a simple class with a template
  • Generating multiple classes from a list
  • Generating a class...