Posted on April 29, 2017July 14, 2017 by Abhilash Kumar

10 python modules you must know about

Without any doubt Python is one of the most talked about programming language in this Universe. It’s everywhere, and because of how simple it is to learn it – many beginners start their career with Python. The syntax of Python is very similar to that of English language, with the exception of a few extra characters here and there. In this post you will know about 10 important python modules you should know.

1. NumPy

NumPy provides some advance math functionalities to python. This package is mainly designed to efficiently manipulate large multi-dimensional arrays of arbitrary records without sacrificing too much speed for small multi-dimensional arrays. There are also basic facilities for discrete fourier transform, basic linear algebra and random number generation.

2. SciPy

SciPy is a library of algorithms and mathematical tools for python and has caused many scientists to switch from ruby to python. It is mainly used for scientific computing and technical computing. SciPy contains modules for optimization, linear algebra, integration, interpolation, special functions, signal and image processing, ODE solvers and other tasks common in science and engineering.

3. Pandas

Pandas is a Python package designed to do work with “labeled” and “relational” data simple and intuitive. Pandas is a perfect tool for data wrangling. It designed for quick and easy data manipulation, aggregation, and visualization.

4. matplotlib

matplotlib is a plotting library for the Python programming language and its numerical mathematics extension NumPy. It is a library mainly used for making 2D plots of arrays in Python. It is very useful for any data scientist or any data analyzer.

5. IPython

IPython is a command shell for interactive computing in Python and other programming languages, originally developed for the Python programming language, that offers introspection, rich media, shell syntax, tab completion, and history.

6. PyGame

This is a interesting python module for developers who like to play games and develop them.This library will help you achieve your goal of 2d game development.

7. Twisted

Twisted is an event-driven networking engine written in Python and licensed under the open source MIT license.It is the most important tool for any network application developer. It has a very beautiful api and is used by a lot of famous python developers.

8. PrettyTable

As the name already suggests, prettytable is a table printing library which displays the contents of the table as a pretty formatted table on the console.

9. nose

nose is a testing framework for Python. Their tagline is: “nose extends unit test to make testing easier.” It is used by millions of python developers. It is a must have if you do test driven development.

10. Scrapy

Scrapy is a free and open source web crawling framework, written in Python. Originally designed for web scraping, it can also be used to extract data using APIs or as a general purpose web crawler.

Posted on April 15, 2017July 3, 2017 by Abhilash Kumar

Code easy with these 3 Array hacks

Arrays are everywhere in JavaScript and with the new spread operators introduced in ECMAScript 6, you can do awesome things with them. In this post I will show you 3 useful tricks you can use when programming.

1. Iterating through an empty array

JavaScript arrays are sparse in nature in that there are a lot of holes in them. Try creating an array using the Array’s constructor and you will see what I mean.

> const arr = new Array(4);
[undefined, undefined, undefined, undefined]

You may find that iterating over a sparse array to apply a certain transformation is hard.

> const arr = new Array(4);
> arr.map((elem, index) => index);
[undefined, undefined, undefined, undefined]

To solve this, you can use Array.apply when creating the array.

> const arr = Array.apply(null, new Array(4));
> arr.map((elem, index) => index);
[0, 1, 2, 3]

2. Passing an empty parameter to a method

If you want to call a method and ignore one of its parameters, then JavaScript will complain if you keep it empty.

> method('parameter1', , 'parameter3');
Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token ,

A workaround that people usually resort to is to pass either null or undefined.

> method('parameter1', null, 'parameter3') // or
> method('parameter1', undefined, 'parameter3');

I personally don’t like using null since JavaScript treats it as an object and that’s just weird. With the introduction of spread operators in ES6, there is a neater way of passing empty parameters to a method. As previously mentioned, arrays are sparse in nature and so passing empty values to it is totally okay. We’ll use this to our advantage.

> method(...['parameter1', , 'parameter3']); // works!

3. Unique array values

I always wonder why the Array constructor does not have a designated method to facilitate the use of unique array values. Spread operators are here for the rescue. Use spread operators with the Set constructor to generate unique array values.

> const arr = [...new Set([1, 2, 3, 3])];
[1, 2, 3]

Posted on April 8, 2017July 14, 2017 by Abhilash Kumar

5 Top Python Frameworks For Web Developers

A Web framework can be very helpful for developers to write Web applications without having to handle low-level details as protocols, sockets or process/thread management. But a perfect choice might depend on a developer specific needs, preferences, and skill level. Python is a dynamic, object-oriented language. It was originally designed as an object-oriented language and some more advanced features were added in the later versions. In addition to the design purpose of language itself, the Python standard library is worth praising, and it even brings its own server. In other aspects, Python has enough free data library, free Web page template system and the library interacting with the Web server, which can be designed to your Web application. In this article we are going to look at 5 top Python Frameworks(according to me) for web development purpose.
1. Django

Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages fast growth and clean, pragmatic design. In case you are building something that’s much like a e-commerce web site, then it’s best to, in all probability, go along with Django. It would get your work executed fast. You do not have to fret about too many expertise selections. It gives the whole lot factor you want from template engine to ORM. If you wish to use your web app framework as a CMS, Django might be a more sensible choice. It’s free and open source.

2. Flask

Flask Python framework is highly extensible. A newbie programmer may find Flask inefficient due to lack of features like form validation, and database abstraction layer. In such a case, know that Flask allows you to implement extensions; therefore, you can add any required functionality.

3. CherryPy

CherryPy is a Web application development framework based on Python, that greatly simplifies the work of Python Web developers. It provides a friendly HTTP protocol interfaces for Python developers. CherryPy has a built in HTTP server or Web server, so the users of CherryPy can directly run CherryPy application without building Web server.

4. Pyramid

Pyramid is an open source, Python web application development framework. Its primary goal is to make it easier for a Python developer to create web applications. Pyramid is similar to Flask . Pyramid is compatible with python3, with a great documentation, its minimal, fast and flexible and has an integration of nosql: mongodb, couchdb . Pyramid is best for Developers working on API projects, prototyping a concept & developing large web applications, such as a CMS.

5. Web2py

Web2py is a free open source full-stack framework for rapid development of fast, scalable, secure and portable database-driven web-based applications. Written and programmable in Python.

Posted on March 18, 2017July 14, 2017 by Abhilash Kumar

5 Best IDE for Python Programmers

An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software suite that consolidates the basic tools developers need to write and test software. Typically, an IDE contains a code editor, a compiler or interpreter and a debugger that the developer accesses through a single graphical user interface (GUI). An IDE may be a standalone application, or it may be included as part of one or more existing and compatible applications. In this article we will know about the 5 best IDE (according to me) for Python Developers

1. VIM

VIM is one of the most advanced text editors and is very popular one among the community of Python developers. It is open source and available free of cost under GPL license. Vim though is best known as an editor but it offers nothing less than a full featured Python development environment when configured correctly for Python development. VIM is light weight, modular and fast and is best suited for programmers who love keyboards and only keyboards, no mouse use while coding.

2. Sublime Text 3 / Anaconda Python IDE

Sublime Text 3 is one of the most powerful cross platform lightweight code editors till date. With the use of plugins Sublime Text 3 can be used as a full featured IDE – the Sublime Python IDE. You get elegance of sublime text and powers of Python at one place to create your own magic. The most powerful transformation is brought to you by Anaconda package which provides code completion and linting for Python.

3. Pydev with Eclipse – Best Python IDE (Free Tier)

Pydev is the Python IDE for masses for the simple reason that it is free of cost and comes packed with powerful features for efficient Python programming. It is an open source plugin that runs on top of Eclipse and brings Python to the kingdom of Eclipse. If you are an existing Eclipse user then Pydev is just home for you, if not, then Eclipse might sound intimidating in the beginning but worth the efforts.

4. Emacs – Python Editor cum IDE

Emacs has an ecosystem of its own. It is the GNU text editor which is extensible and highly customizable. When it comes to Python programming, Emacs can be configured in such a way that it gets transformed into a fully functional free Python IDE.

5. Spyder Python

Spyder Python is an open source IDE for Python, best suited for scientific python development. It is a lightweight software, written in Python itself and available as free to use under MIT license. Some of the basic features of Spyder python are multi language editor, interactive console, documentation viewer, variable explorer, Find in files, files explorer etc. It can get Spyder IDE package for windows, Mac or Linux.

Posted on March 11, 2017July 11, 2017 by Abhilash Kumar

Top 5 nodeJs framework for Developers

Node.js is one of the more groundbreaking additions to the web development landscape, offering an environment that enables full-stack JavaScript applications for the first time ever. Prior to Node.js, JavaScript was limited to client-side scripting, but Node transformed the script into a cross-over language, capable of writing software that’s portable between the front and back ends.

JavaScript brought its speed and cross-platform compatibility to back-end development, along with its devoted community of JavaScript programmers. In its 2015 developer survey, Stack Overflow found that JavaScript was the most popular programming language—even among back-end developers. This soaring popularity, along with Node’s expansion into an entire development ecosystem, has fueled the creation of numerous Node.js frameworks that both extend and add to Node.js’s existing features.

Let us look at the Node.js framework list representing most powerful and feature rich frameworks available today that help you build real time and scalable web applications with ease.

Express.js

Express.js a lightweight, efficient middleware and routing framework. Express.js is best known as another quarter of the MEAN (MongoDB, Express, AngularJS and Node) stack, and is the most popular Node.js framework. Because Node.js itself wasn’t intended to build websites, the Express framework is able to create an HTTP server in Node, layering in the middleware structure and response/request functions needed to actually run a site. It’s a pretty minimalist framework that’s great for giving developers extra, built-in web application features and the Express API without overriding the already robust, feature-packed Node.js platform. Note that it does require a bit more manual tasks, which can be tedious and time consuming, and has a bit larger footprint than other frameworks.

Socket.io

Socket.io is all about real-time communication and chat apps—the kind of software that hinges on robust event-driven, bidirectional communication between browsers and servers. It’s a websocket-compatible server that’s great at providing collaborative features and real-time analytics, whether they’re in the form of a counter or more in-depth metrics. Socket.io is compatible with every device, operating system, and browser. It’s been used by top tech companies like Trello, Zendesk, Microsoft, and Yammer, as well as Flightcar, a startup that lets people rent out their cars from the airport while they’re traveling.

Hapi.js

Need more enterprise-level functionality? Working with distributed engineering teams? Hapi.js may be the best route for you. Hapi.js was created by developers at Walmart in preparation for Black Friday traffic as an answer to limitations they’d run into with Express—mainly extensibility and maintainability issues. They found that, as the application grew, Express code was more difficult to split into chunks and delegate to different teams. Hapi’s plug-in system enables it to be worked on in sections without breaking the rest of the code base.

Right out of the box, Hapi does a lot more than Express. While there are similarities and differences between the two frameworks, Hapi—which is primarily used for rapidly building and testing application programming interfaces (APIs)—generally enables developers to focus more on writing reusable application logic instead of spending time building infrastructure. It supports API development with an array of plug-ins from authorization and authentication to metrics and logging. It’s been used by heavy-hitters like OpenTable, Macy’s, Condé Nast, and Disney.

Mean.io

Mean.js and Mean.io are frameworks written by the same author with subtle differences. Mean.io was developed first, so it has a bit more documentation and a larger community behind it. It’s based on Node modules, with client- and server-side files in separate modules. Mean.js uses an MVC-style Express/Node back end and an AngularJS-based front end. It also leverages the Grunt tool to enable automated testing.

Mojito

Mojito is an MVC framework based on Yahoo! Cocktails, a JavaScript-based mobile development platform built by developers in house at Yahoo!. Mojito acts like a module that layers very well with other core Node modules, while implementing Cocktails’ on-line/off-line, multi-device, hosted application platform.