Table of contents for Python The Complete Manual in Python The Complete Manual

Python is a versatile language and its rise in popularity is certainly no surprise. Its similarity to everyday language has made it a perfect companion for the Raspberry Pi, which is often a first step into practical programming. But don’t be fooled by its beginner-friendly credentials – Python has plenty of more advanced functions. In this bookazine, you will learn how to program in Python, discover amazing projects to improve your understanding, and find ways to use Python to enhance your experience of computing. You’ll also create fun projects including programming a quadcopter drone and sending text messages from Raspberry Pi. Let’s get coding!…

What you’ll need… Python 2.7: https://www.python.org/download/releases/2.7/ Django version 1.4: https://www.djangoproject.com Python is known for its simplicity and capabilities. At this point it is so advanced that there is nothing you cannot do with Python, and conquering the web is one of the possibilities. When you are using Python for web development you get access to a huge catalogue of modules and community support – make the most of them. Web development in Python can be done in many different ways, right from using the plain old CGI modules to utilising fully groomed web frameworks. Using the latter is the most popular method of building web applications with Python, since it allows you to build applications without worrying about all that low-level implementation stuff. There are many web frameworks available for…

What you’ll need… Python-devel Python development libraries, required for compiling third-party Python module setuptools setuptools allows you to download, build, install, upgrade, and uninstall Python packages with ease Note This is written for the Python 2.X series, as it is still the most popular and default Python distribution across all the platforms (including all Linux distros, BSDs and Mac OS X). System administration is an important part of our computing environment. It does not matter whether you are managing systems at your work our home. Linux, being a UNIX-based operating system, already has everything a system administrator needs, such as the world-class shells (not just one but many, including Bash, csh, zsh etc), handy tools, and many other features which make the Linux system an administrator’s dream. So why do…

What you’ll need… Python www.python.org/doc Kivy is a highly cross-platform graphical framework for Python, designed for the creation of innovative user interfaces like multitouch apps. Its applications can run not only on the traditional desktop platforms of Linux, OS X and Windows, but also Android and iOS, plus devices like the Raspberry Pi. That means you can develop cross-platform apps using Python libraries such as Requests, SQLAlchemy or even NumPy. You can even access native mobile APIs straight from Python using some of Kivy’s sister projects. Another great feature is the Cython-optimised OpenGL graphics pipeline, allowing advanced GPU effects even though the basic Python API is very simple. Kivy is a set of Python/Cython modules that can easily be installed via pip, but you’ll need a few dependencies. It uses…

What you’ll need… Raspbian www.raspberrypi.org/downloads Python www.python.org/doc Pygame www.pygame.org/docs Art assets opengameart.org We had great fun creating our basic Space Invaders clone, Pivaders, in the previous guide. Pygame’s ability to group, manage and detect collisions thanks to the Sprite class really made a great difference to our project, not just in terms of code length, but in simplicity too. If you missed the first part of the project, you can find the v0.1 code listing on GitHub via git.io/cBVTBg, while you can find version v0.2 of the code, including all the images, music and sound effects we’ve used at git.io/8QsK-wd. To help keep our project code manageable and straightforward (as your projects grow keeping your code easy to follow becomes increasingly harder) we integrated a few animation methods into our…

What you’ll need… Raspberry Pi Twilio account Text messaging, or SMS (Short Message Service), has become a staple of everyday communication. For many of us, not a day will go by without sending a text message. What began life as a 40 pence message service is now off ered by most tariff providers as an unlimited service. Twilio, a cloud communications company, enables you to send SMS messages for free from your Raspberry Pi to a mobile phone using just six lines of code. So, you no longer need to be chained to your mobile while you work, and can focus on one screen rather than two! Set up your Twilio account 01 The first step of this project is to register for a Twilio account and Twilio number. This…

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Python is a great programming language for both beginners and experts. It is designed with code readability in mind, making it an excellent choice for beginners who are still getting used to various programming concepts. The language is popular and has plenty of libraries available, allowing programmers to get a lot done with relatively little code. You can make all kinds of applications in Python: you could use the Pygame framework to write simple 2D games, you could use the GTK libraries to create a windowed application, or you could try something a little more ambitious like an app such as creating one using Python’s Bluetooth and Input libraries to capture the input from a USB keyboard and relay the input events to an Android phone. For this tutorial we’re…

What you’ll need… Python www.python.org/doc We all use shell on a daily basis. For most of us, shell is the gateway into our Linux system. For years and even today, Bash has been the default shell for Linux. But it is getting a bit long in the tooth. No need to be offended: we still believe Bash is the best shell out there when compared to some other UNIX shells such as Korn Shell (KSH), C Shell (CSH) or even TCSH. This tutorial is not about Bash being incapable, but it is about how to breathe completely new life into the shell to do old things conveniently and new things which were previously not possible, even by a long shot. So, without further delay, let’s jump in. While the Python…

What you’ll need… Beautiful Soup www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/ HTML5Lib https://github.com/html5lib/ html5lib-python Python 2.6+ & WikiParser. zip Six https://pypi.python.org/pypi In this tutorial we’ll use the popular Python library Beautiful Soup to scrape Wikipedia for links to articles and then save those pages for offline reading. This is ideal for when travelling or in a location with a poor internet connection. The plan is simple: using Beautiful Soup with the HTML5Lib Parser, we’re going to load a Wikipedia page, remove all of the GUI and unrelated content, search the content for links to other Wikipedia articles and then, after a tiny bit of modification, write them to a file. Even though it’s now the de facto knowledge base of the world, Wikipedia isn’t great when it comes to DOM consistency – that is, IDs…

What you’ll need… Latest Raspbian Image www.raspberrypi.org/downloads Pillow https://github.com/python-imaging/Pillow SimpleGUITk https://github.com/dholm/simpleguitk/ The Raspberry Pi is a fantastic way to start learning how to code. One area that can be very rewarding for amateur coders is game programming, allowing for a more interactive result and a greater sense of accomplishment. Game programming can also teach improvisation and advanced mathematics skills for code. We’ll be using the fantastic SimpleGUITk module in Python, a very straightforward way of creating graphical interfaces based on Tkinter. Python module preparation 01 Head to the websites we’ve listed in ‘What you’ll need’ and download a zip of the source files from the GitHub pages. Update your Raspbian packages and then install the following: Install the modules 02 Open the terminal and use cd to move to the…

Twitter is a useful way of sharing information with the world and it’s our favourite method of giving our views quickly and conveniently. Many millions of people use the microblogging platform from their computers, mobile devices and possibly even have it on their televisions. You don’t need to keep pressing that retweet button, though. With a sprinkling of Python, you can have your Raspberry Pi do it for you. Here’s how to create your own Twitter bot… What you’ll need… Internet connectivity Latest version of Raspbian www.raspberrypi.org/ downloads Installing the required software 01 Log into the Raspbian system with the username Pi and the password raspberry. Get the latest package lists using the command sudo apt-get update. Then install the Python Package installer using sudo apt-get install python-pip. Once you’ve…

Basics Running Python scripts 01 On most of the UNIX systems, you can run Python scripts from the command line. Running Python programs from Python interpreter 02 The Python interactive interpreter makes it easy to try your first steps in programming and using all Python commands. You just issue each command at the command prompt (>>>), one by one, and the answer is immediate. Python interpreter can be started by issuing the command: In this article, all the code starting at the >>> symbol is meant to be given at the Python prompt. It is also important to remember that Python takes tabs very seriously – so if you are receiving any error that mentions tabs, correct the tab spacing. Dynamic typing 03 In Java, C++, and other statically typed…

What you’ll need… A Raspberry Pi with all necessary peripherals SD card with latest Debian image for Pi www.raspberrypi.org/downloads This tutorial follows on from the one last issue: ‘Setting up the Raspberry Pi’, where we showed you how to prepare your SD card for use with the Raspberry Pi. The beauty of using an SD card image is that the operating system is ready to go and a development environment is already configured for us. We’ll use a lightweight integrated development environment (IDE) called Geany for our Python development. Geany provides a friendlier interface compared to text-based editors such as nano to make it easier to get into the swing of things. This tutorial will cover topics such as: 􀁴 Basic arithmetic 􀁴 Comparison operators, for example ‘equal to’ and ‘not…

After you have fired up your Pi, maybe installed XBMC and had a play around with streaming, you might be ready for your next challenge. One route to go down is to find interesting uses for one of the many desktop OSs available for the little computer, perhaps using it as a web server, an NAS or retro arcade console. This is all great fun, but an often-overlooked feature of the Pi is its hardware pinouts. If you’ve never done any electronics before, then the Pi is a great place to start. Or maybe you have used a programmable microcontroller such as Arduino in the past; the Pi, with its increased CPU and RAM over the Arduino, opens up many more possibilities for fun projects. The Raspberry Pi features a…