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

Introducing built-in functions used in reflection

To understand reflection and the usage of Python’s built-in functions to perform reflection, we will continue making use of our core example of ABC Megamart throughout this chapter. We will be specifically looking at the concept and examples based on coupons in a retail store throughout this chapter. Coupons are a technique used by retail stores or manufacturers to promote their products among consumers. Coupons are generated and posted through various modes of advertisements, and they are used to attract customers to a specific store or product.

We will make use of the same set of built-in functions as in introspection, to apply reflection on Python objects:

  • id()
  • eval()
  • callable()
  • hastattr()
  • getattr()
  • isinstance()
  • issubclass()
  • property()

Reflection on Python objects helps in the metaprogramming of these objects using the built-in functions that can introspect Python objects, and...