Python Jumpstart by Building 10 Apps Transcripts
Chapter: App 5: Real-time weather client
Lecture: Concept: Python Package Index (PyPI)
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Let's talk about the Python package index.
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You can think of the Python package index
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as the place where you can go to find all these amazing packages
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that can add super powers to your application
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so quite literally in a few lines of code you can install
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amazing HTTP clients as we are going to with Request,
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screen scraping libraries, scientific visualization libraries,
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code coverage, testing libraries,
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you name it, chances are you can find it on PyPi.
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Sometimes you will hear PyPi referred to as PyPy,
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that is kind of considered not really correct,
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there is also an alternate implementation of Python that is called PyPy
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so it's also a little confusing with that,
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so PyPi if you go back aways, people have also referred to this as the chi shop,
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building on the whole Monty Python history of Python itself.
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Now, look at how many packages are in here,
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there are 75,633 packages or libraries that you can just go out and grab,
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and bring into your application.
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Let's go to the website PyPi.python.org/pypi
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because who wouldn't want a little reputation in their url, anyway right.
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Over here, we have the Python package index
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and you can see when I took that screenshot just yesterday,
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there was 75,630 ish today, there are 75,690,
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so that is around 60 new packages added just in the last day.
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That's not updating packages, that of course happens all the time,
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but new packages that were not there before.
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That is really awesome.
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Let me show you one other thing,
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it's kind of a part of the trick but it's really awesome and pretty cool
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and it makes you feel good about working with Python,
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so I told you that Python is often referred to
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as a programming language with batteries included,
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meaning it has a really rich standard library with lots of functionality built in,
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you wrap on the Python package index
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and you get 75,000 more amazing things
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and so the xkcd comic took that and did a really interesting little twist
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and so let's go over here and actually not go to the web where xkcd is
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but let's go to Python and actually launch Python 3.
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Remember the way you use any of these packages from the package index
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or the standard libraries, you say import
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so you would say import OS to work with path and so on
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but the cartoon goes something like this,
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import antigravity, because in Python you can import anything it basically exists,
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so what is going to happen if I hit enter,
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literally inside Python when I say import antigravity well, something pretty funny,
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it actually takes us over to the webpage where the cartoon is
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so let's check this out, so the guy asks, "How are you flying?"
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"Python, I just learned it last night, everything is so simple,
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hello world is just print hello world!"
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"I don't know, don't you have like typing white space" little weird,
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"Come join us, programming is fun again,
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it's a whole new world up here".
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"But how are you flying?"
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"I just imported antigravity." "That's it?"
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"Well, I also sampled everything in the medicine cabinet for comparison,
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but I think this is the Python".
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So this little cartoon really captures the fact that there is so many things
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you can just install and import and do amazing with.
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That is one of the reasons Python is so fun to work with.
