20 Python Libraries You Aren't Using (but Should) Twenty Python Libraries You Aren't Using (but Should)

The Python ecosystem is vast and far-reaching in both scope and depth. Starting out in this crazy, open-source forest is daunting, and even with years of experience, it still requires continual effort to keep up-to-date with the best libraries and techniques. This report helps you explore some of the lesser known Python libraries and tools, including third-party modules and several extremely useful tools in the standard library that deserve more attention. What makes this collection different from other lists online? Author Caleb Hattingh diligently spent time finding and testing hidden gems that fit several criteria: easy to install and use, cross-platform, applicable to more than one domain, and not yet popular but likely to become so soon. You will likely discover at least a couple of cool libraries that will assist you in your everyday Python activities, no matter your specialization. This report examines: Little-known standard library modules: collections, contextlib, concurrent.futures, logging, and sched Flit for simplifying the process of submitting a Python package to the Python Package Index (PyPI) Colorama and begins for making your command-line applications friendlier for users Pyqtgraph and pywebview for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) Watchdog, psutil, and ptpython for working closely with the operating system Hug for exposing APIs for other users programs to consume Arrow and parsedatetime for working with dates and times Third-party general-purpose libraries: Boltons, Cython, and the awesome-python curated list Caleb Hattingh has been using Python professionally for 15 years in a variety of applications, including chemical engineering simulations, hotel-management software, and web services for GPS tracking. Caleb volunteers as a mentor at CoderDojo, Software Carpentry, and Django Girls, and has created codermoji.com to provide a different framework for learning to code. Caleb has also recorded an extensive video course on Cython (titled Learning Cython) for O’Reilly Media. Cover 1 Programming 2 Copyright 4 Table of Contents 5 Chapter 1. Expanding Your Python Knowledge: Lesser-Known Libraries 7 The Standard Library 8 collections 8 contextlib 12 concurrent.futures 14 logging 17 sched 19 In the Wild 21 Easier Python Packaging with flit 22 Command-Line Applications 25 colorama 25 begins 28 Graphical User Interfaces 32 pyqtgraph 32 pywebview 35 System Tools 40 psutil 40 Watchdog 42 ptpython 45 Web APIs with hug 47 Dates and Times 52 arrow 53 parsedatetime 56 General-Purpose Libraries 59 boltons 59 Cython 65 awesome-python 72 Conclusion 72 About the Author 74