Expecter Gadget - Alternative for the Assert Statement

I just happened to come upon a great little project, Expecter Gadget. It provides a viable alternative for Python's native assert statement. Compared to regular assert it provides two important features: readable errors and a way to test for exceptions. Here are a couple of examples to show how handy it is in practice:



I will definitely play around with it in the future. Hopefully you will find it useful too. :)

Book Preview - Grok 1.0 Web Development

I will be reviewing Grok 1.0 Web Development by Carlos de la Guardia shortly. Thanks to Packt Publishing for the chance. :)

By the looks of it, it should be somewhat interesting book to read. I have previously dabbled with Django web framework but this is the first time I get to play around with Grok.

It doesn't look that much different from Django, at least if one is to believe the free chapter. I am sure there will be some surprises in store, however. Hopefully I will grok it. :D

Book Review - Python Testing: Beginner's Guide

Disclaimer: I received a review copy of this book from the publisher, Packt Publishing.

The description of the book states following:

• Covers everything you need to test your code in Python
• Easiest and enjoyable approach to learn Python testing
• Write, execute, and understand the result of tests in the unit test framework
• Packed with step-by-step examples and clear explanations

I know it's marketing text but the book does manage to live up to the promise to some extent. :) Even though I'm quite set on my testing habits, I did manage to pick a couple of tricks from the book. The book is extremely pragmatic, perhaps even too much so.

Status Update + "Python Testing: Beginner's Guide" Preview

I just started at my new job last week so it has been a little hectic lately. Nevertheless I did manage to work on Pynu (the graph library) a bit. I decided to revamp the whole API and come up with some extended functionality. I suppose it will take a while till I'm confident enough to release it. The new version will contain at least jQueryish selectors (no more "find", just ('expression')) and more graph variants.

Django Navigation

I also managed to get some work done on an old Django project of mine that I originally wrote during a university project. The basic idea is that the component takes care of constructing the navigation (UI + urls) based on a given YAML definition. It also supports i18n well so it allows you to translate your urls automagically. All in all it's quite a simple piece of code. It has proven extremely handy for prototyping purposes, however. Fortunately the code has been licensed under BSD so sharing it won't be a problem. I still have quite a bit of clean up to do but it's coming along nicely. I might even find some use for Pynu there. :)

Book Preview

I received somewhat interesting email a day ago. I got asked to review Python Testing: Beginner's Guide by Packt Publishing. The firm is known for its technical books mostly related to open source technologies.

I haven't seen too many testing books around that focus particularly on Python so you can bet I'm thrilled. Based on its table of contents it seems to contain a heap of interesting material ranging from test-driven development to automated testing. Better yet the approach seems to be somewhat practical so points for that.

The book seems to use the standard unit testing framework in its examples. Although I'm used to py.test that probably won't be much of a problem. Perhaps I will figure out why people tend to use the standard solution instead. Okay, perhaps being the standard solution has something to do with it. :)

If you are interested in the book and can't wait till my review, be sure to check out the free chapter. They even have the book code available here. If you happen to have some specific ideas, questions, what-not about the book, feel free to comment and I will look into it during the review process.