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

Summary

In this chapter, we have learned how to examine function objects in Python using the concept of reflection and the corresponding applications of reflection, in which we saw how to implement reflection using built-in functions such as id, callable, hasattr, isinstance, issubclass, and property on various Python objects, and we also learned how to apply them to our core example. From all of these concepts, we learned how to examine Python objects such as classes, methods, and functions. From the examples covered under each topic, we also learned how to apply reflection in practical use cases.

Similar to other chapters covered in this book, this chapter, which covered the concept of reflection, also covered changing the behavior of Python objects externally using metaprogramming.

In the next chapter, we will be looking at the concept of generics with some interesting examples.