Practical Python

Python is an interpreted, object-oriented programming language offering developers an uncommonly powerful and flexible solution for executing a variety of tasks, including Web site development, system administration, GUI creation, and much more. Offering portability across numerous platforms, an extensive standard library, and a simple syntactical structure, Python is rapidly becoming a language of choice for developers wishing to conquer development deadlines without sacrificing performance.
With an extensive developer community, and corporate heavyweights such as Industrial Light+Magic, Google, Infoseek, Red Hat, and NASA using Python in such diverse roles as graphics rendering, Internet services, software installation and mission planning, respectively, it is clear that Python has established itself among the most popular scripting languages available today.
Practical Python offers a highly practical, readable guide to the Python programming language. In disarmingly readable prose, author Magnus Lie Hetland guides readers through those concepts of most importance to the budding Python developer. Following a succinct yet concise overview of the installation process, Hetland brings the reader up to speed regarding the general programming precepts common to every high-level language, including datatypes, conditionals and looping, and modularity. Notably, Hetland takes great care to provide a thorough introduction to Python's potentially confusing datatype offering, including arrays, dictionaries, lists, and tuples, employing numerous examples aimed towards familiarizing the reader with the sometimes subtle differences of each.
Armed with the foundational knowledge, readers are then introduced to Python's file-handling, database, GUI, and string handling capabilities. Additionally, readers are treated to an excellent review of Python's object-oriented, functional, and exception-handling capabilities. All chapters are peppered with references to useful functions from Python's standard library, done so with the intention of demonstrating the considerable built-in features offered by the default Python package.
Hetland devotes the second half of the book to project development, taking great care to choose a series of ten increasingly complex applications that would ultimately prove to be of timely and wide-ranging interest to burgeoning and expert developers alike. Project focus includes automated document conversion, newsgroup administration, graphical and PDF document generation, remote document maintenance, the creation and implementation of an XML RPC server, database integration, and Graphical User Interface (GUI) and game development.
Practical Python is an indispensable guide for developers intent on learning what they need to know to master the Python language.
- Author is well known for his online Python tutorials, Instant Python and Instant Hacking, and is the founder and lead developer of Anygui, a respected Python GUI unification project
- Ruthlessly focused on providing practical Python instruction, foregoing those topics not of interest to mainstream developers
- Readers will be able to download the complete source code of all ten projects, allowing for experimentation or integration into other projects

• Chapter 1: Instant Hacking: Where Do I Start?
• Chapter 2: Sequences: Lists, Tuples, and Arrays
• Chapter 3: Working With Strings
• Chapter 4: Dictionaries: When Indices Won't Do
• Chapter 5: More Statements, Conditionals, and Loops
• Chapter 6: Abstraction and Exceptions
• Chapter 7: More Abstraction
• Chapter 8: Magic Methods and Iterators
• Chapter 9: Batteries Included
• Chapter 10: File I/O
• Chapter 11: Instant Markup
• Chapter 12: In the News
• Chapter 13: Graphic Generation
• Chapter 14: Remote Editing With CGI
• Chapter 15: XML RPC
• Chapter 16: Databasing
• Chapter 17: XML
• Chapter 18: Gaming