Awesome Python Features Explained Using the World of Magic

As outlined in my blog post, I decided to take on a new habit using a technique I found on the 'get disciplined' subreddit.

As one of my new habits I chose: "Code for 15 minutes every day". As part of the habit I've started creating a series of blog posts on important and awesome Python features, including object oriented programming, properties, function annotations, duck typing, etc.

Since I was bored by the usual tutorial examples, I looked for a topic that would make it fun to study and implement the concepts. And since I absolutely love Harry Potter, I started creating my own magical universe around the topics. A short introduction into my magical universe - The Tales of Castle Kilmere can be found here. So if you like magic and want to improve your Python knowledge and skills, get right into it!

A logbook of what I worked on each day can be found on my website.

The code runs in Python 3.6, the code on data classes requires Python 3.7 (or you pip install data classes for Python 3.6).

Start date: 07/23/2018

Keynote at PyCon Estonia and EuroPython

I gave a keynote talk about this project titled "Finding Magic in Python" at PyCon Estonia 2020. So if you are up for some magic and want to see an introduction to some of the topics (like Namedtuples or Abstract Base Classes) check out the recording on YouTube.

I held another talk at EuroPython, check out the recording here.

Running pytest

In case you get ImportError: no module named magical_universe when running pytest from within the test_code directory, take a look at this post and try running pytest from the root directory (which is the home directory in my case) using python -m pytest magical_universe/test_code/.

Overview

Day	Topics	Blog post with explanations	Code for the day
1	Intro to object oriented programming, classes, inheritance	Day 1	Code day 1
2	Class methods, instance methods, static methods, using class methods as alternative constructors	Day 2	Code day 2
3	Type annotations	Day 3	Code day 3
4	To-string conversion, __repr__, __str__	Day 4	Code day 4
5	Decorators	Day 5	No new code added
6	Properties, @property and property(), setters, getters	Day 6	Code day 6
7	Underscore patterns for variable naming, _variable, __variable, __variable__, etc.	Day 7	No new code added
8	New methods and classes added to the HP universe	Day 8	Code day 8
9	Duck typing, EAFP principle	Day 9	Code day 9
10 & 11	Namedtuples	Day 10 & 11	Code day 10 & 11
12 - 15	Abstract Base Classes	Day 12 to 15	Code day 12 to 15
16 - 18	Data Classes	Day 16 to 18	Code day 16 to 18
19	Immutable Data Classes	Day 19	Code day 19
20	Decorators within a class	Day 20	Code day 20
21	The mysterious if __name__ == "__main__"	Day 21	No new code added
22 - 24	Context managers and the with statement	Day 22 to 24	Code day 22 to 24
25 - 28	Testing code with pytest	Day 25 to 28	Code day 25 to 28
29 - 31	Iterators, iterables, iteration	Day 29 to 31	Code day 29 to 31
32	Test code for Professor class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 32
33	Test code for Ghost class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 33
34	Counting objects with Collections.counter	Day 34	Day 34
35	Test code for DarkArmyMember class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 35
36	Test code for Potion class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 36
37	Extension of Magical Universe with classmethods for Charm, Hex, Curse, etc.	Day 37	Code day 37
38 - 39	Test code for Spell class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 38 to 39
40 - 42	Test code for Pupil class	No blog post, see Day 25 to 28 for an introduction to testing	Code day 40 to 42
43 - 45	Custom exception classes	Day 43 to 45	Code day 43 to 45
46	functools.wraps - Avoiding losing metdata when applying decorators	Day 46	Code day 46
47 - 48	collections.defaultdict	Day 47 to 48	Code day 47 to 48
49 - 50	Working with config files	Day 49 to 50	Code day 49 to 50
51	Wrap up	Day 51	No new code added

Feedback

In case you find a mistake in the code or the blog posts, please let me know by opening an issue!