New Scripts | Python

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XML is a fairly simple format. It uses plain Unicode text rather than binary encoding, and all the structures are declared with predictable-looking tags. Nonetheless, there are still enough rules in the XML grammar that a carefully debugged parser is needed to process XML documents -- and every parser imposes its own particular programming style. An alternative is to make XML even simpler. The open-source PYX format is a purely line-oriented format for representing XML documents that allows for much easier processing of XML document contents with common text tools like grep, sed, awk, wc, and the usual UNIX collection.

Many parsing tools have been written for Python. This column discusses a high-level parsing language built on top of Python. SimpleParse provides an EBNF-style syntax on top of mxTextTools that can greatly clarify the expression of grammars.

Along with several other popular scripting languages, Python is an excellent tool for scanning and manipulating textual data. This article summarizes Python's text processing facilities for the programmer new to Python. The article explains some general concepts of regular expressions and offers advice on when to use (or not use) regular expressions while processing text.

This article presents the xml_objectify module. It describes how to use xml_objectify and the advantages of using this "Pythonic" module for working with XML documents as objects.

As part of the ongoing quest to create a more seamless integration between XML and Python, this article presents the xml_pickle module. The author discusses the design goals and decisions that went into xml_pickle and provides a list of likely uses.

Wasp is an platform-independent HTML preprocessor. It's like PHP or ASP, except with the powerful Python language at your fingertips. You can add Python code to your pages, expand boiler-plate text, etc. Wasp may be run in three ways. In client mode, your files are processed in a batch to produce HTML -- no server required. In CGI mode, you get a complete web application framework with cookie and session support, activity logging, error handling (with e-mail notification), a remote debugging utility and more. In server mode Wasp runs its own threaded web server with all the CGI features embedded. In all these cases you get the simplicity of the standard URL = file paradigm. You don't need to write page classes and the like unless you wish to. Your own Python routines can be easily installed as plugins. There are no dependencies on outside libraries. Wasp is designed to be fast, robust and extensible.

plibw provides a thin layer to wrap DB-API 2.0 compatible driver to PHPLib style.

HyperSQL is like a doxygen for SQL, hypermapping SQL views, packages, procedures, and functions to HTML source code listings and showing all code locations where these are used. The internal "where used" functionality also scans C++ and Java source files.

ChartDirector is a fast and powerful charting component for creating professional and clickable charts. It's unique layering architecture enables you to synthesize the charts you want using standard chart layers. ChartDirector's comprehensive chart styles include pie, donut, bar, line, spline, step line, trend line, curve-fitting, inter-line filling, area, band, scatter, bubble, floating box, box-whisker, waterfall, contour, heat map, surface, vector, finance, gantt, radar, polar, rose, pyramid, cone, funnel, angular and linear meters and guages. ChartDirector charts are interactive with full suite of mouse events, supporting tool tips, clickable chart objects, and "drag to zoom" and "drag to scroll" features. AJAX enabled features allow charts to update without refreshing web pages. Easy to use and with comprehensive documentation. Come with numerous examples. Free trial available.

Extending Python in C is easy once you see how it all works, and an extension of Python is equally easy to package up for Zope. The hard part is wading through the different documentation sets in search of the nuggets of information you need, and this article has collected them for you. Article includes code snipets.

Pippy is a port of (a subset of) Python to the PalmOS. With Pippy, Python programmers can create custom applications to run on Palm devices, as well as use Pippy as an interactive environment directly on the Palm. This article evaluates the strengths and limitations of Pippy as a means of implementing Palm applications.

The Part 3 of the series continues the discussion by illustrating additional capabilities, like currying and other higher-order functions contained in the Xoltar Toolkit. Article includes code snipets.

This column presents some of the changes to the author's previous module suite, utilities for high-level Python handling of XML documents, as well as some tips on advanced aspects of using and customizing the modules. Code samples demonstrate py_obj._XML attributes, node attributes treated as objects and lists, py_obj magic attribute behavior, and more.

The first two installments of this column provided an overview of working with XML in Python. In the year since those initial writings, however, the state of XML tools for Python has advanced significantly. Unfortunately, most of these advances have not been backwards compatible. This special installment article revisits the author's previous discussion of XML tools, and provides up-to-date code samples.

This tutorial by Devshed.com delves into Python's history, basic syntax, and concepts.

This column continues the introduction to functional programming (FP) in Python. The introduction to different paradigms of program problem-solving demonstrates several intermediate and advanced FP concepts. Article includes code snipets.

Although users usually think of Python as a procedural and object-oriented language, it actually contains everything you need for a completely functional approach to programming. This article discusses general concepts of functional programming, and illustrates ways of implementing functional techniques in Python.

This is the beginning of a short series on creating a software repository system built on Web services and developed in the Python programming language. This article shows you the details of using the 4Suite open-source XML server with Python to create Web service-based applications.

This is a quick overview of Python script language. Dicussion includes comparison to other scripting languages, Using the Python CGI Module, debugging, and more.