Python Standard Library, The Hidden Gems

Digging into unexpected features that the Python Standard Library exposes for us.

Alessandro Molina

CPython Debugging Development General python

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The Python Standard Library is a very rich toolset, which is the reason why Python is stated to come with "batteries included". In such an amount of features and tools it's easy to get lost and miss some of the less unknown modules or gems hidden within the whole load of functions and classes.

This talk aims at showcasing some recipes, snippets and usages of standard library modules and functions that are less known or that are not covered in the most common books and tutorials available for Python.

The talk will try to showcase a bunch of short examples in the hope to foster the "oh, wow! I didn't think about that" reaction at least once in the audience.
We will see how frequently for tasks where you used third party libraries or frameworks a solution bultin into the standard library is already available, and such solution is guaranteed to be maintained and well working for the years to come thanks to the standard library reliability and stability.

The showcased examples are took from the “Modern Python Standard Library Cookbook” book that I authored.

Type: Talk (45 mins); Python level: Beginner; Domain level: Beginner


Alessandro Molina

Python developer since 2001, has always been interested in Python as a Web Development Platform.

A core developer of the TurboGears2 web framework and maintainer of Beaker Caching/Session framework; has collaborated with various python projects related to web development like FormEncode, ToscaWidgets2, the Sprox widget generation library, the Ming MongoDB ORM and authored the DukPy Javascript interpreter for Python and the DEPOT file management framework for web applications.

Currently acting as chief of technology for a few startups, as tech lead and co-founder for AXANT.it and as an engineer in Crunch.io