Python Boot Camp | Mastering Python Programming Essentials

At Course Completion

This course combines expert lecture, real-world demonstrations and group discussions with machine-based practical labs and exercises.  Our engaging instructors and mentors are highly experienced practitioners who bring years of current "on-the-job" experience into every classroom.  Throughout the hands-on course, you’ll learn to write essential Python scripts using the most current and efficient skills, best practices and techniques.

Working in a hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert team, you’ll learn to:

• Create working Python scripts following best practices
• Use python data types appropriately
• Read and write files with both text and binary data
• Search and replace text with regular expressions
• Get familiar with the standard library and its work-saving modules
• Use lesser known but powerful Python data types
• Create "real-world", professional Python applications
• Work with dates, times, and calendars
• Know when to use collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets
• Understand Pythonic features such as comprehensions and iterators
• Write robust code using exception handling

Audience Profile

This introductory-level Python course is geared for experienced users who want to use Python in web development projects, or  system administrators and web site administrators who want to use Python to support their server installations, as well as anyone else who wants to automate or simplify common tasks with the use of Python scripts.

Prerequisites

Basic familiarity with any programming or scripting language would be helpful, along with a working, user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac, or Windows.

Outline

1. Quick Python Overview

• What is Python?
• Advantages/disadvantages
• Python timeline
• Installing Python
• Getting help

2. The Python Environment

• Starting Python
• Using the interpreter
• Running a Python script
• Editors and IDEs

3. Getting Started

• Using variables
• Builtin functions
• String data
• Numeric data
• Converting types
• Console input/output
• Command line arguments

4. Flow Control

• About flow control
• The if statement
• Relational and Boolean values
• while loops
• Exiting from loops

5. Array Types

• Sequence types in general
• Lists and list methods
• Tuples
• Indexing and slicing
• Iterating through a sequence
• Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
• List comprehensions and generators

6. Working with files

• File I/O overview
• Opening a text file
• Reading a text file
• Writing to a text file

7. Dictionaries and Sets

• About dictionaries
• Creating dictionaries
• Getting values
• Iterating through a dictionary
• About sets
• Creating sets
• Working with sets

8. Functions

• Defining functions
• Returning values
• Parameters and arguments
• Variable scope

9. Sorting

• The sorted() function
• Custom sort keys
• Lambda functions
• Sorting in reverse
• Using min() and max()

10. Errors and Exception Handling

• Exceptions
• Using try/catch/else/finally
• Handling multiple exceptions
• Ignoring exceptions

11. Modules and Packages

• Creating Moyules
• The import statement
• Module search path
• Using packages
• Function and Module aliases

12. Object Oriented Programming & Classes

• About object-oriented programming
• Defining classes
• Constructors
• Understanding self
• Properties
• Instance Methods and data
• Class methods and data
• Inheritance

13. Regular Expressions

• RE syntax overview
• RE objects
• Searching and matching
• Compilation flags
• Groups and special groups
• Search-and-replace
• Splitting strings

14. The standard library

• The sys module
• Math functions
• Random numbers
• Reading CSV data
• Zip files
• Reading pages and files from URLs
• Sending email

15. Dates and times

• Date and time representations
• Parsing dates from text
• Formatting as text
• Converting representations
• Calendar data
• Time zones

16. Working with the file system

• Paths, directories, and filenames
• Checking for existence
• Permissions and other file attributes
• Walking directory trees
• Using shutil for file operations

17. Advanced data handling

• Defaultdict and Counter
• Pretty-printing data structures
• Compressed archives (zip, gzip, tar, etc.)
• Persistent data

18. Network programming

• Using requests
• Grabbing web content
• Sending email
• Using SSH for remote access
• Using FTP

19. Writing real-life applications

• Reading input files a la Unix
• Parsing command-line options
• Detecting the current platform
• Implementing logging