wxPython Cookbook Available for Pre-Order

Books, Python, wxPython,

I am excited to announce that the wxPython Cookbook is now available for Pre-Order. You can get your digital copy on Gumroad or Leanpub now. You can get a sample of the book on Leanpub if you’d like to “try before you buy”.

There will be over 50 recipes in this book. The examples in my book will work with both wxPython 3.0.2 Classic as well as wxPython Phoenix, which is the bleeding edge of wxPython that supports Python 3. If I discover any recipes that do not work with Phoenix, they will be clearly marked or there will be an alternative example given that does work.

wxpython_cookbook_final

Here is a partial listing of the current set of recipes in no particular order:

  • Adding / Removing Widgets Dynamically
  • How to put a background image on a panel
  • Binding Multiple Widgets to the Same Handler
  • Catching Exceptions from Anywhere
  • wxPython’s Context Managers
  • Converting wx.DateTime to Python datetime
  • Creating an About Box
  • How to Create a Login Dialog
  • How to Create a “Dark Mode”
  • Generating a Dialog from a Config File
  • How to Disable a Wizard’s Next Button
  • How to Use Drag and Drop
  • How to Drag and Drop a File From Your App to the OS
  • How to Edit Your GUI Interactively Using reload()
  • How to Embed an Image in the Title Bar
  • Extracting XML from the RichTextCtrl
  • How to Fade-in a Frame / Dialog
  • How to Fire Multiple Event Handlers
  • Making your Frame Maximize or Full Screen
  • Using wx.Frame Styles
  • Get the Event Name Instead of an Integer
  • How to Get Children Widgets from a Sizer
  • How to Use the Clipboard
  • Catching Key and Char Events
  • Learning How Focus Works in wxPython
  • Making Your Text Flash
  • Minimizing to System Tray
  • Using ObjectListView instead of ListCtrl

You can read more about the project in my Kickstarter announcement article. Please note that the Kickstarter campaign is over.

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PyDev of the Week: Katie McLaughlin

Advocacy, PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Katie McLaughlin (@glasnt) as our PyDev of the Week! She is a core developer of the BeeWare project. You should take a moment and check out her Github profile to see what fun projects she’s a part of. Katie also has a fun little website and was a speaker at PyCon 2016. Let’s take a few moments to get to know her better!

katie

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

G’day! I’m Australian, originally from Brisbane, but now living in Sydney. I’ve got a Bachelor of Information Technology, and I’ve been in the tech industry for going on ten years now. I’ve been in a bunch of different roles and technologies, but mostly in web hosting and cloud stuff. When I’m not on a computer or attending conferences, I enjoy cooking and making tapestries.

Why did you start using Python?

To fix a bug in a bit of in-house code! There was a bug in an old script, and I saw the “#!/usr/bin/env python” and learnt from there. I didn’t go back to Python for a few years, but just after I was accepted to PyCon Australia 2015, I thought I should brush up on what little I knew. That’s about a year ago now, and it’s now my go-to language for scripting. I was had previously used Ruby for years, and I only occasionally still automatically type “puts” instead of “print”.

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PyDev of the Week: Benedikt Eggers

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python,

This week we welcome Benedikt Eggers (@be_eggers) as our PyDev of the Week. Benedikt is one of the core developers working on the IronPython project. IronPython is the version of Python that is integrated with Microsoft’s .NET framework, much like Jython is integrated with Java. If you’re interesting in seeing what Benedikt has been up to lately, you might want to check out his Github profile. Let’s take a few minutes to get to know our fellow Pythoneer!

Could you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

My name is Benedikt Eggers and I was born and live in Germany (23 years). I’ve working as a software developer and engineer and had studied business informatics. At my little spare time I do sports and work on open source projects, like IronPython.

Why did you start using Python?

To be honest, I’ve started using Python by searching for a script engine for .net. That way I came to IronPython and established it in our company. There we are using it to extend our software and writing and using Python modules in both worlds. After a while I got more into Python and thought that’s a great concept of a dynamic language. So it’s a good contrast to C#. It is perfect for scripting and other nice and quick stuff.

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wxPython Cookbook – Hard Cover Editions Available

Books, Python, wxPython,

I’ve been toying with the idea of doing a hard cover version of my books for a long time so I thought I might try it out with the Cookbook. I went ahead and ran the numbers using my printer on demand resources and discovered that a regular hard cover isn’t crazy expensive. So I have added a new perk priced at $35 for a hard cover version of the book.

But wait! There’s more! Since the cookbook will have so many screenshots and code examples, it occurred to me that it might be fun to offer a color version of the book. That way you can see the screenshots in full color and you’ll also be able to view the syntax highlighting in the code examples too! Unfortunately, printing in color is crazy expensive. But if you are interested in that option, it is available at $100.

All versions of the book will be signed. If there’s a lot of interest in the black-and-white hard cover, I’ll increase the number of items available for that one.

To get either of these editions or the regular paperback, you will need to pledge on Kickstarter.

wxpython_cookbook_final

Restarting a Twisted Reactor

Cross-Platform, Python,

I recently started using twisted a couple of weeks ago. For those who don’t know, twisted is “event-driven networking engine written in Python”. The learning curve is pretty steep if you’ve never done asynchronous programming before. During the project I was working on, I ran into a condition where I thought I needed to restart the twisted reactor. According to everything I found online, restarting the reactor is not supported. But I can be stubborn so I tried to find a way anyway.

Restarting a Twisted Reactor

Let’s start by creating a pretty standard twisted server. We’ll subclass LineReceiver which basically makes a TCP server that accepts full lines of text, although it can also do raw data too. Let’s take a look at the code:

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Book Contest: Win a Copy of Python 201

Books, Python 3,

I have decided to sponsor a contest for my second book, Python 201: Intermediate Python. I will be giving away 3 copies of my eBook bundle (PDF, EPUB and MOBI) and 2 copies of the paperback, which I will ship anywhere in the world. If you haven’t heard of my book, you may want to read about it here.

How You Can Win

To win your copy of this book, all you need to do is come up with a comment below highlighting the reason “why you would like to win this book”.

Duration of the contest & selection of winners

The contest is valid until Friday, Sept 16th at 11:59 p.m. CST, and is open to everyone. Winners will be selected on the basis of their comment posted. The contest will close on 09/17/2016 at 12 a.m. CST.

Python201_cover20160330_sm-237x300

PyDev of the Week: Rami Chowdhury

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Rami Chowdhury (@necaris) as our PyDev of the Week! Rami is an active contributor to the Python community and an organization for the North American PyCon. If you’d like to see what he’s up to, you might want to check out his website which has links to the various open source repositories that he contributes to. Let’s take a few moments to get to know him better!

Can you tell us a little about yourself (hobbies, education, etc):

I was always interested in and a pretty fearless user of computers when I was younger, but I went to college to study political science and economics (in the UK) and only stumbled into programming then. It felt a bit like I’d found my calling. In my spare time I’m making a concerted effort _not_ to write more code, and I’ve taken up knitting as a way to occupy my hands. I also enjoy reading, wandering the museums of my hometown (Washington DC), and playing with my dachshund Wesley.

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Rami Chowdhury →

wxPython Cookbook Cover Story

Books, GUI Toolkits, Python, wxPython, ,

I always spend some time thinking about how I want my book’s cover to look. When I was designing the Cookbook’s cover, I thought mostly about food and chefs. I had originally thought I might have some kind of kitchen scene with mice in chef hats and a snake on the mantle. But I wanted to take the idea of cooking and put a twist on it.

Instead of a kitchen, I thought of cowboys herding cattle and how they usually had a cook with them. So I went with that idea, although I didn’t have the herds of animals added to the cover.

To help differentiate the Cookbook from my previous works, I hired a different artist from my previous titles named Liza Tretyakova. You can check out some of her work on Behance or even contact her directly by email (schimmel@inbox.ru) if you happen to need a great artist.

I thought it might be fun for you to see how the cover art evolved as I worked with the artist to get my ideas for the cover turned into reality. Let’s start with the first sketch I got from Liza:

wxpython_cookbook_cover_sketch

Continue reading wxPython Cookbook Cover Story →

Python 201 is Officially Published!

Books, Python,

My second book, Python 201: Intermediate Python (ISBN: 978-0-9960628-3-1), is now finished and officially published. You can check it out at the following locations:

Python201_cover20160330_sm-237x300

The paperback will become available on Amazon and other online retailers later this week or month depending on how long it takes Lulu to get it pushed out. I am also working on creating an iBook version for iTunes, but that isn’t complete at this time.

PyDev of the Week: Reinout van Rees

PyDevOfTheWeek, Python

This week we welcome Reinout van Rees (@reinoutvanrees) as our PyDev of the Week! Reinout is the creator / maintainer of zest.releaser. He has a nice website that includes a Python blog that you might want to check out. I would also recommend checking his Github page to see what projects he’s a part of.

Why did you start using Python?

I’m from the Netherlands, which of course gives you a slight advantage when programming Python. By education, I’m a civil engineer. I *did* take all the available programming classes, but most of it was of course traffic engineering, construction calculation and water engineering and so on.

In 2000 I ended up in a EU research project at the end of my study which was basically a mix between civil engineering and internet programming. Just what I needed. I used some Java libraries to do XML processing (which was hip at that time), but couldn’t get something to work in time for an important demo.

So… I tried out Jython. Calling Java code with a Java Python interpreter was way easier and I got the demo finished in time. So *I started using Python by necessity and because I accidentally tripped over it*.

After discovering Python halfway 2000 I started using it more and more during my PhD work. Zope got popular then. I visited many of the early Europython conferences. I started using Plone quite soon. And when I had to find a real job after my PhD I quite by accident ended up at a Plone company, doing real programming for money.

Continue reading PyDev of the Week: Reinout van Rees →