PythonStuff:

Some Free Python App Hosting Options

from a longer list by Nik Tomazic at: https://testdriven.io/blog/heroku-alternatives/

• PythonAnywhere https://www.pythonanywhere.com/
• Render https://render.com/, and https://render.com/docs/free
• Fly.io https://fly.io/, and https://community.fly.io/t/i-dont-understand-free-tier/5145/2
• Vercel https://vercel.com/, Python can only be used as serverless functions https://vercel.com/guides/does-vercel-offer-free-trial
• Netlify: Python can only be used as serverless functions https://www.netlify.com/
• Binder:https://mybinder.org/ for hosting/sharing Jupyter notebooks

Some Python code that I tend to copy & morph

New environment? Install Python:

Debian-based Linux, for example, Ubuntu or one of its variants:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-venv python3-pip

RedHat/Fedora-based Linux:

sudo dnf install python3

Or check out a more comprehensive description of setting up a new environment at https://github.com/mccright/PythonStuff/blob/main/New-environment-notes.md

Get the Python Launcher for Unix: https://github.com/brettcannon/python-launcher

minpyver

Sometimes it is important to enforce a minimum Python version. See Nicholas Hairs' "Summary of Major Changes Between Python Versions" for a history of some reasons why that is...

• 'minpyver.py' - In some situations it is important to use a very specific Python version.
  Yes, it might be better to just add:

if sys.version_info < (3, 10):
    raise Exception("Use only with Python 3.10 or higher")

Python Logging

I have another repo with with some Python logging content https://github.com/mccright/PythonLoggingExamples/

Python Regex Cheatsheet

From Debuggex: https://www.debuggex.com/cheatsheet/regex/python

Python re(gex) -- a magical tool for text processing

By Sundeep Agarwal https://learnbyexample.github.io/py_regular_expressions/ or the entire book in a single markdown file at https://github.com/learnbyexample/py_regular_expressions/blob/master/py_regex.md with supporting code at https://github.com/learnbyexample/py_regular_expressions

stringSearch

• This is a harness for evaluating the contents of files (in a directory and all child directories) using a collection of your own regex's. If you need specialized secrets-hunting utilities, see TruffleHog or Burp Suite Extension SecretFinder. I used ideas & code from both of them in this string search utility.

simpleAPIClient [REST]

• Postman is great for most use cases (or try Darren Burns' posting), but I still sometimes need to poke at a simple API that accepts a POST with a secret in the POST data when my code is not working as expected. Here is a simple model for starting this kind of work in: https://github.com/mccright/PythonStuff/tree/main/simplePOST2API

(env) C:\temp\prob>python simpleAPIClient.py --help
usage: sampleAPIClient [-h] [-d] [-t] [-s] [-p] [-x PROXY_URL] -u API_URL

sampleAPIClient: an API Client POST skeleton for problem-solving

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -d, --debug           Use to send debug logging to console
  -t, --timing          Use to send timing to console
  -s, --disable_cert_security
                        Use to disable SSL security checking. This can be a security risk concern. Use with caution.
  -p, --proxy_needed    Use to enable a proxy
  -x PROXY_URL, --proxy_url PROXY_URL
                        When enabling a proxy, this is the full URL
  -u API_URL, --api_url API_URL
                        Target api-endpoint - full URL

(env) C:\temp\prob>

• This is not a point-and-shoot utility.
• At a minimum, you need to modify the code: Replace the "HEADER_PARAMS" and " POST_DATA" dicts with content relevant to your problem/target.
• Don't assume that I know what I am doing. This served its purpose on some weekend work. It has not seen many different use cases yet and may have serious limitations.
• This is not an attempt to deal with APIs that are protected by one or another OAuth implementation or other session-related interface. Its target are those simple POST-and-done APIs that ought to be simple to use, but sometimes are not.

Sometimes you need to know what types of files are in a github repo along with their layout in order to prepare for a risk-reasonable static analysis.

• getGHtree.py is a model for extracting a list of files in tree format from user repositories.
• getGHorgtree.py is a model for extracting a list of files in tree format from non-public organization repositories.

Get Accurate time from NTP Servers

• ntp.py will fetch accurate time from pool.ntp.org. I generally use this idiom for timestamps. Use of pool.ntp.org from inside your organization may be inappropriate or or it may be inaccessible (NTP may be blocked at your perimeter). Your organization may have an "internal" NTP server. If so, replace "pool.ntp.org" with your trusted server.

getSomeIPInfo

• getSomeIPInfo is just a reminder for me about navigating simple json. First using hard-coded references, and then iterating through every key/value pair. Both approaches have their place. There is another example used in getGHtree.py and getGHorgtree.py.

useRandomUserAgent

• useRandomUserAgent is just a reminder for me about rotating my user_agent strings.

checkResponseCodes

• checkResponseCodes is a list of all the http Codes from the IANA Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) Status Code Registry in the form of a long 'case statement.' I wanted it around so that I could copy ot the subset that I needed at any given time. It is not meant to be used as is.

http-response-codes

• http-response-codes is a CLI script that emits a list of all the http Codes from your current http module plus their short description & long description.
  I usually pipe its output through grep for the code I am trying to understand. I found that when troubleshooting people's cloud-hosted lambdas & functions I run into more obscure response codes and need to check their meaning.

createRandomStrings.py

• createRandomStrings is some unfinished experimenting with different ways to create 'unique' strings, a common requirement...

encryptstr.py

encryptstr is a sketal set of AES-CBC string encryption/decryption functions.

temp-file-in-mem.py

temp-file-in-mem.py illustrates how to create and use an in-memory tmp file. Native Python provides a range of objects for data storage, so this is likely only needed for odd, one-off use cases that require a fast and lean queue/buffer, building a stream, holding text for # processing later, etc. and something like a Python list won't do.

get-pdf-text.py

get-pdf-text is an informal approach to using 'pypdf' to extract text from PDF files that often works well-enough for me. It is constructed from examples in the pypdf docs. pypdf can extract a range of PDF components.

otherNotes.md

• otherNotes.md is just a collection of short code fragments that act as reminders for me.

AWS Lambdas

• Starter project https://github.com/serverless/examples/tree/master/aws-python-simple-http-endpoint
• 25 model projects https://github.com/serverless/examples

Minify HTML

• There is a Python module minify-html with source at https://github.com/wilsonzlin/minify-html

Scrape some text on the Web

• A Python package & command-line tool to gather text on the Web: https://github.com/adbar/trafilatura

Run your Jupyter notebook on the command line

https://github.com/jsvine/nbexec

Python and Visual Studio Code (VSCode)

See: "Python Development in Visual Studio Code." by Jon Fincher
https://realpython.com/python-development-visual-studio-code/
and "Advanced Visual Studio Code for Python Developers." by Anthony Shaw
https://realpython.com/advanced-visual-studio-code-python/

Python Enhancement Proposal 20 -- PEP-20

(available via: import this)
The Zen of Python by Tim Peters (1999). This is often described as the core philosophy of Python.
https://peps.python.org/pep-0020/#the-zen-of-python
or
https://github.com/python/peps/blob/main/pep-0020.txt

Python conventions

• Put a space before a comment: # This is a comment
• Don't make lines longer than ~80 characters
• Constants in all-caps: MY_CONSTANT
• Use underscores to separate words in variable names: my_variable
• Avoid meaningless variable names. Avoid numbers in variable names. Wrong: thing1, thing2. Right: cat_list, fluffy_cat_list.
• When ambiguous, put variable type in name: my_list or my_set. This is particularly important for collections. Is it a dict or a list?
• Document code with triple quotes (multiline comments): """My documentation"""
• Write functions when you find yourself repeating code
• When importing modules, don't import specific functions. Import the whole module, and use the module name and function together. Right: import time; time.sleep(1). Wrong: from time import sleep; sleep(1). (Are there exceptions to this rule?)
• When you find yourself checking if items are in a list, use a set
• Write a snippet of documentation at the top of your file to help you remember what the file does.
• Write inputs and outputs to functions in a comment in the function body.
• Debugging has its place, but don't hesitate to use print() statements.
  (The original conventions in this list are from a readme by https://github.com/georgeberry. Thank you George Berry.)
  • And use Python f-strings to make your work easier.
• Use better-exceptions during local development, and use care to keep it out of your production deployments.
• Another approach would be to use pymg, a CLI tool that can interpret Python files by the Python interpreter and display the error message in a more readable way if an exception occurs https://github.com/mimseyedi/pymg
• What is the difference between using "_" and "__" in variable or function names? The responses get at some Python conventions: https://old.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/s5z0l8/can_someone_explain_and_in_python_clearly_for_me/

External References

• "Avoiding Silent Failures in Python: Best Practices for Error Handling." By Bob Belderbos, 2023-08-07 https://pybit.es/articles/python-errors-should-not-pass-silently
• "Python Quirks." https://writing.peercy.net/p/python-quirks
• "WTF Python!-- Exploring and understanding Python through surprising snippets." https://github.com/satwikkansal/wtfpython
• "Python Data Science Handbook." By Jake VanderPlas. https://github.com/jakevdp/PythonDataScienceHandbook and https://jakevdp.github.io/PythonDataScienceHandbook/
• A package that can save you some typing whenever you will be accepting command line arguments. Just run duckargs with the arguments your program will accept along with example values for options, and duckargs will generate the python code for a program that uses argparse to handle those arguments. https://github.com/eriknyquist/duckargs
• Python Concepts by CodingAcademy: https://github.com/Codecademy/docs/tree/main/content/python/concepts
• Simple file upload using Flask: https://roytuts.com/python-flask-file-upload-example/ and consider enhancing it with Flask ReUploaded.
• Flasgger is a Flask extension to extract OpenAPI-Specification from all Flask views registered in your API. Flasgger also comes with SwaggerUI embedded so you can access http://localhost:5000/apidocs and visualize and interact with your API resources.https://github.com/flasgger/flasgger
• Some example Flask methods https://github.com/MartinHeinz/LifestyleTracker/blob/master/app/init.py
• "Flask-Backbone -- Your Next Flask Boilerplate..." https://abstractkitchen.com/blog/flask-backbone/ and the code at https://github.com/abstractkitchen/flask-backbone
• "A Gentle Introduction to AWS Lambda." Matt Bacchi, 2022-02-01 https://bacchi.org/posts/gentle-intro-lambda/
• Python Graph Gallery: A Collection of Hundreds of Charts Made With Python https://www.python-graph-gallery.com/ especially time series graphing https://www.python-graph-gallery.com/basic-time-series-with-matplotlib
• Six books about Python and data science (PDFs hosted by Riccardo Rigon): https://osf.io/fmkwy/
• See the responses to a question about Python type hints (especially the response by 'BerislavLopac') https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30288000
• "How to Pickle and Unpickle Objects in Python." https://stackabuse.com/how-to-pickle-and-unpickle-objects-in-python/
• Fetch a git repository (from GitHub or locally), build a container image based on the specifications found in the repository & optionally launch the container that you can use to explore the repository https://github.com/jupyterhub/repo2docker
• A Python exception library to ease handling and displaying exceptions -- Caution: It may be unsafe for some use cases https://github.com/MasoniteFramework/exceptionite
• Python Concepts by CodingAcademy: https://github.com/Codecademy/docs/tree/main/content/python/concepts
• Coding Docs by CodingAcademy: https://github.com/Codecademy/docs
• "Learn Python 3." by Sonny Li, David Patlut and Tim Liedtke, https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-python-3 with supporting materials at https://github.com/Codecademy/learn-python[https://github.com/Codecademy/learn-python](https://github.com/Codecademy/learn-python)
• "An introduction to Python for non-programmers using inflammation data." by Software-Carpentry https://github.com/swcarpentry/python-novice-inflammation
• "Introduction to Python for non-programmers with a focus on plotting and data analysis." by Software-Carpentry https://github.com/swcarpentry/python-novice-gapminder
• Python CheatSheets: https://github.com/afizs/python-notes/blob/main/resources/cheatsheets.md
• Local hosting of a Python CheatSheet from gto76: https://github.com/mccright/python-cheatsheet/blob/main/README.md
• 'A Dense' Python CheatSheet: https://github.com/kieranholland/best-python-cheat-sheet
• Python CheatSheet: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university/blob/main/extras/cheat%20sheets/python-cheat-sheet-v1.pdf
• Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns for Coding Questions (Python code in 16 problem categories): https://github.com/cl2333/Grokking-the-Coding-Interview-Patterns-for-Coding-Questions
• Python code for ~1000 situations: https://github.com/cl2333/Leetcode/tree/master/Python
• 11 Approaches to File Handling in Python: https://github.com/balapriyac/File-Handling-in-Python/tree/main/Code or look at what GitHub returns on this topic: https://github.com/topics/file-handling-in-python?l=python
• Coding Interview Python Language Essentials: https://github.com/jwasham/coding-interview-university/blob/main/extras/cheat%20sheets/Coding%20Interview%20Python%20Language%20Essentials.pdf