Categories
Python

Python port to the Alphabet Class

I have a pretty bad habit of porting codes from one language to another. PHP and Python both are my favorites. But sometimes I feel that I enjoy coding more in Python than PHP. It’s just because I am a lazy guy who hates using text editors to complete a script entirely before executing the program. I like interactive shells. Now that I have set up interactive shell for PHP as well, I write little throw away programs in both PHP and Python. But it still happens that the Python interactive interpreter is loads better than the PHP one. I have to type “echo” every time I want some input from the PHP shell, where as I have to type the name of an element (variable, object, list, tuple or whatever) and python displays it on the shell. So it becomes easier to experiment and debug.

Back to the topic, I was thinking of porting the alphabet class I wrote in PHP to Python. And finally I got some time today morning and finished it.

How to use ?

Source Code

Categories
Python

Using web.py with Google App Engine

I love coding in Python and have been exploring the excellent web.py framework lately. From what I’ve seen, web.py is a very simple yet powerful python based web framework. It’d take me a lot of time to learn django (if I ever manage to make up my mind into it) and it already took around a couple of hours to understand the Google App Engine’s default webapp framework.

web.py includes a built in web server to develop an application locally. But I am a Google fan and was thinking of deploying web.py on Google App Engine. I believed GAE and web.py together can help me put up a web app in minutes. And so did they… 😀

The first question came to my mind was “How am I going to install web.py on my GAE account ?”. Well, it was pretty easy in the end. Just extract the web.py package and put the “web” directory inside your application directory. That is the “web” directory would be in the same directory where the app.yaml file resides. Now, in app.yaml file, map all URLs to a single python file. In my case, it was “main.py”.

Now develop the application in the normal web.py way. “It’s easy as pie!” — I thought. But it was not that easy in fact. I had to make a couple of changes.

The app I wrote didn’t do what I expected it to. Rather it raised an “import error” 🙁 Later, I found out that I have to use “web.application.cgirun()” method instead of the normal “run()” method.

Then I reloaded the app. But this time I got an “internal server error”. After visiting the web.py cookbook, I found out that, to use web.py templates on GAE, I have to compile all templates using the “web/template.py –compile templates” command. I did so. All my templates were compiled into python source code. Cool !

Now my app was running smooth and working fine ! So, at last I made it… Yahoo ! I am loving python, web.py and Google App Engine together 😉

PS: I am using web.py 0.3 where I have the cgirun() method. In older versions of web.py, you have to be tricky. In that case, please consult this thread:

http://bit.ly/EoVyM

Here’s the source code (Without the template):

Here’s the “templates/masnun.htm”:

Categories
Python

ZIP, Python and TK

The title says it all. Here’s a very simple program written in Python and TK which can extract a ZIP file to the selected location.

Python 3 – Source Codes:

Explanations It creates a TK interface with a button and a text entry widgets. Clicking on the button invokes the work() function. The work() function displays a filedialog and prompts you to choose a ZIP file. Then it creates a new ZipFile object using the file location. The extractall() method of the ZipFile object extracts all contents of the archive into the directory specified using the inputBox text entry widget. We call inputBox.get() to get it’s value. If the value of target location is null, the files are extracted into the current working directory. In case of an invalid target location, it prints out error messages to the console.

It’s a very basic program with a little functionality. It mainly demonstrates the use of TK and Python to write GUI programs that really does something.