Python Squeezes the Web

This article presents the xml_objectify module. It describes how to use xml_objectify and the advantages of using this "Pythonic" module for working with XML documents as objects.

XML is a fairly simple format. It uses plain Unicode text rather than binary encoding, and all the structures are declared with predictable-looking tags. Nonetheless, there are still enough rules in the XML grammar that a carefully debugged parser is needed to process XML documents -- and every parser imposes its own particular programming style. An alternative is to make XML even simpler. The open-source PYX format is a purely line-oriented format for representing XML documents that allows for much easier processing of XML document contents with common text tools like grep, sed, awk, wc, and the usual UNIX collection.

This 5-page tutorial describes how to grab remote web pages and process them locally in Python. Useful for parsing information off the web.

Many parsing tools have been written for Python. This column discusses a high-level parsing language built on top of Python. SimpleParse provides an EBNF-style syntax on top of mxTextTools that can greatly clarify the expression of grammars.

Along with several other popular scripting languages, Python is an excellent tool for scanning and manipulating textual data. This article summarizes Python's text processing facilities for the programmer new to Python. The article explains some general concepts of regular expressions and offers advice on when to use (or not use) regular expressions while processing text.

Although users usually think of Python as a procedural and object-oriented language, it actually contains everything you need for a completely functional approach to programming. This article discusses general concepts of functional programming, and illustrates ways of implementing functional techniques in Python.

This column continues the introduction to functional programming (FP) in Python. The introduction to different paradigms of program problem-solving demonstrates several intermediate and advanced FP concepts. Article includes code snipets.

The Part 3 of the series continues the discussion by illustrating additional capabilities, like currying and other higher-order functions contained in the Xoltar Toolkit. Article includes code snipets.

Tutorials on using the JDBC-ODBC Bridge driver with MS Access database. Topics include creating MS Access database file; creating DSN for MS Access database files; inserting rows to and retrieving rows from Access database.