Python 3 Essentials

An introductory and intermediate-level course with practical, hands-on training to get students from the basics of writing and running Python scripts to developing more advanced features and applications.

In this course students will be led through a series of progressively advanced topics, each consisting of lecture, discussion, hands-on lab exercises, and lab review. This comprehensive “skills-centric” course trains people on core Python and web development skills to the intermediate level, combining current, effective techniques with best practices. Working in an engaging hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert instructors, students will learn to:

Create working Python scripts using best practices
Understand and use python data types correctly
Read and write files with both text and binary data
Search and replace text with regular expressions
Get familiar with the Python standard library and its many work-saving modules
Use lesser-known but powerful Python data types and packages
Create professional "real-world" 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 that includes exception handling

Course Outline

1 - AN OVERVIEW OF PYTHON

What is python?
An overview of Python
Python development timeline
Advantages and disadvantages of Python
Getting help with pydoc and other tools

2 - THE PYTHON ENVIRONMENT

Starting Python
Using the interpreter
Running Python scripts
Python scripts on Unix/Windows
Editors and IDEs

3 - GETTING STARTED

Using variables
Built-in functions
Strings
Numbers
Converting among types
Writing to the screen
Command line parameters

4 - FLOW CONTROL

About flow control
White space
Conditional expressions
Relational and Boolean operators
While loops
Alternate loop exits

5 - SEQUENCES

About sequences
Lists and list methods
Tuples
Indexing and slicing
Iterating through a sequence
Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
List comprehensions
Generator Expressions
Nested sequences

6 - WORKING WITH FILES

File overview
Opening a text file
Reading a text file
Writing to a text file
Reading and writing raw (binary) data
Converting binary data with struct

7 - DICTIONARIES AND SETS

About dictionaries
Creating dictionaries
Iterating through a dictionary
About sets
Creating sets
Working with sets

8 - FUNCTIONS

Defining functions
Parameters
Global and local scope
Nested functions
Returning values

9 - SORTING

The sorted() function
Alternate keys
Lambda functions
Sorting collections
Using operator.itemgetter()
Reverse sorting

10 - ERRORS AND EXCEPTION HANDLING

Syntax errors
Exceptions
Using try/catch/else/finally
Handling multiple exceptions
Ignoring exceptions

11 - MODULES AND PACKAGES

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

12 - CLASSES

About o-o programming
Defining classes
Constructors
Methods
Instance data
Properties
Class methods and data

13 - REGULAR EXPRESSIONS

RE syntax overview
RE Objects
Searching and matching
Compilation flags
Groups and special groups
Replacing text
Splitting strings

14 - THE STANDARD LIBRARY

The sys module
Launching external programs
Math functions
Random numbers
The string module
Reading CSV data

15 - DATES AND TIMES

Working with dates and times
Translating timestamps
Parsing dates from text
Formatting dates
Calendar data

16 - WORKING WITH THE FILE SYSTEM

Paths, directories, and filenames
Checking for existence
Permissions and other file attributes
Walking directory trees
Creating filters with fileinput
Using shutil for file operations

17 - ADVANCED DATA HANDLING

Defaultdict and Counter
Prettyprinting data structures
Compressed archives (zip, gzip, tar, etc.)
Persistent data

18 - NETWORK SERVICES

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

19 - WRITING REAL-LIFE APPLICATIONS

Parsing command-line options
Detecting the current platform
Trapping signals
Implementing logging

Actual course outline may vary depending on offering center. Contact your sales representative for more information.