Python - Introduction

The Python Introduction course is ready for IT professionals who already have a programming language experience and want to use Python - either as a scripting language for task automation or as a general programming language for creating custom programs and systems. The course is practically focused - after a brief introduction to Python, we begin to solve specific tasks. By solving problems we will learn the basic Python programming and syntax, handling of error status and interaction with the outside world - file system, web services and other areas. In the discussion we will show links to other modules from the standard library, mention frequently used third-party modules, including examples of how to install and explore them. We also test Python custom code. After training, participants will be able to independently create, edit, and distribute their own Python programs. 

Audience

• IT professionals who want to automate routine tasks (data processing, interaction with surrounding services)
• System administrators who need to write portable scripts
• Developers who don't want to learn Python by trial and error.
  
  

Goals

Participants will learn during the course:

• Write their own Python program or module
• Use Python to automatically process their own files
• Use Python as a tool to interact with other services
• Use modules from the standard Python library
• Trace and use third-party extension packages from PyPI (Python Package Index)
• Write basic tests for their own program
• Get their program to end users and run it there
   

Outline

Introduction to Python

• Version of Python. Which Python is the right one?
• Python and IDE installation
• Python as a calculator
• The first Python script and how to run it

Basic data types

• Python as an advanced calculator
• Lists, dictionaries and tuple
• Operations over lists

Basic commands

• Control-flow statements - conditions and cycles
• Own functions
• Python as a programmable calculator

Practical tasks

• Processing files from the file system
• Retrieve data from a file
• Recalculate data
• Save to file
• Cooperation with web service
• Using expansion modules
• Retrieve data from an external service
• Saving data to a relational database
• Creating a graphical report
• Possibility of solving a problem from another domain

Advanced features - classes, modules and exceptions

• Definition of custom classes and modules
• Use exceptions and try / except blocks

Standard Python library

• L inks to interesting modules in the standard library
• working with the operating system
• loading configuration files
• processing of XML, JSON and YAML data formats
• Python Package Index - A list of expansion modules

Python and unit-testing

• introduction to Python testing
• implementation testing with unittest library
• advanced testing with py.test library

Links to popular Python frameworks and libraries

• numerical data processing - NumPy, IPython, matplotlib
• working with pictures - Pillow
• graphical outputs - matplotlib, reportlab
• work with web resources - httplib, requests, BeautifulSoup
• production of GUI application applications - Tk, PyQt, PySide, wxWindows
• work with databases- DB-API
• ORM - SQLAlchemy
• Web Applications - Flask, Django

Distribution of programs and in Python

• how to convert Python script to EXE file

Discussion, questions

• where to look for more documentation
• Internet sources
  
  

Prerequisites

• Basic knowledge of programming in another programming language or
• work in another scripting language (bash, Perl, Ruby, ...)