Python Beginners

Welcome to the documentation for the Python portion of Advanced Web Apps, a course for communications students at the University of Florida.

View the code on GitHub

In this course, students who have learned HTML, CSS, and some JavaScript learn to use Python for web scraping and other tasks useful in media organizations.

Outside resources

These are Google docs.

• Cheat sheet for the command line

• Getting Started with Python 3

• Install virtualenv and Jupyter

See also the official Python documentation.

Contents

• Starting Python
  • Install Python
  • Interactively learning Python
  • Using Mu
  • Saving Python scripts and running them
  • Your first Python program
  • Code blocks and indentation
  • Chapter review: chapters 1 and 2
• Functions in Python
  • Write and run a Python script
  • Put something in, get something out
  • Using parameters and returns in functions
  • Scope
  • try/except
  • Chapter review: chapter 3
• Working with Lists
  • Looping over a list
  • Augmented assignment operators
  • Methods, and finding things in lists
  • Tuples and immutability
  • Lists and references
  • Chapter review: chapter 4
• Reading and Writing Files
  • Check whether a file exists
  • Read a file line by line
  • Open and read a file, write to another file
  • An alternative way to open a file
  • Chapter review: chapter 9
• Dictionaries
  • Introduction to dictionaries
  • How to loop over a dictionary
  • Converting a CSV to a dictionary
  • Writing a dictionary into a CSV file
  • Converting JSON to a dictionary or vice versa
  • Examples of complex dictionaries
  • Chapter review: chapter 5
• CSV Files
  • Introduction to CSV files
  • The csv module in Python
  • Writing to a CSV
  • Reading from a CSV
  • Reading into a dictionary
  • Writing from a dictionary
  • JSON formatted data
  • Chapter review: chapter 16
• Web Scraping Intro
  • Setup for BeautifulSoup
  • Test BeautifulSoup
  • Understanding BeautifulSoup
  • Some basic BeautifulSoup commands
  • A BeautifulSoup scraping example
  • Next steps
• Web Scraping, Part 2
  • Using select() instead of find() or find_all()
  • Working with lists of Tag objects
  • Finding inside a Tag object
  • Moving from page to page while scraping
  • Moving from page to page while scraping, PART 2
  • Harvesting multiple URLs from one page
  • Scrape multiple pages with one script
  • Moving onward
• Web Scraping, Part 3
  • Using Selenium
  • Timing matters
  • Using a different parser
  • Sending HTTP headers in your script
  • Using chunks and iter_content()
  • When all else fails
• Flask Intro
  • Setup for Flask
  • Deconstruct the code in a small Flask app
  • What you know now about Flask
• Flask, Part 2
  • Your second Flask app
  • Putting Flask to work with an API
  • Conclusion
• Flask Templates
  • Folder structure for a Flask app
  • Get started with templates
  • Walkthrough of the presidents app
  • The presidents templates
  • Resources
  • Summary
• Flask: Deploy an App
  • Introduction
  • “Baking it out” with Frozen-Flask
  • When freezing will not work, cannot work
  • Conclusion
• Flask: Web Forms
  • Introduction
  • Setup for using forms in Flask
  • Imports for forms with Flask-WTF and Bootstrap-Flask
  • Set up a form in a Flask app
  • A quick note about Bootstrap in Flask
  • Examining the route function
  • Conclusion
  • Resources
• Flask and Databases
  • Setup: Flask-SQLAlchemy
  • Basics of using a database with Flask
  • How to connect a database to a Flask app
  • Summary
• Flask: Read from a Database
  • The database
  • First read
  • Add a template
  • A different database query
  • One more example
  • Summary
• Flask: Write to a Database
  • The database
  • Add new record to database
  • Delete or update a record
  • Conclusion & tips
• configparser
  • Set up your config file
  • Accessing the config file
  • More info