Forem: Sonika Baniya

7 useful python tips

Sonika Baniya — Fri, 09 Apr 2021 11:47:46 +0000

1. Multiple variable assignment

You can assign values to multiple variables on one line. You can also assign different data type in single line. A simple use case is shown below:

>>> a,b,c = 4, ‘Sonika’, {‘name’:’Sonika’,’lastname’:’Baniya’}
>>> print(a,b,c)
#output
4 Sonika {‘name’: ‘Sonika’, ‘lastname’: ‘Baniya’}

2. For/while else loop

Yes, for else loop. In so many programming language, else statement is restricted to use only with if statement. In python (only for python version 3.X) , the else block just after for/while is executed only when the loop is NOT terminated by a break statement.

def contains_even_number(l):
 for num in l:
  if num % 2 == 0:
   print ("True,list contains an even number")
   break
 else: 
  print ("False, list does not contain an even number")
print ("For List 1:")
contains_even_number([1, 3, 6])
print ("For List 2:")
contains_even_number([1, 7, 3])
#output
For List 1:
True, list contains an even number

For List 2:
False, list does not contain an even number

Similarly, we can use it for while loop.

3. Chain comparison

Chain comparison returns boolean value. Most importantly, it can be chained arbitrarily. Its more self explanatory this way:

5 < 8 < 9                    #returns true
6 > 8 < 10 < 15              #returns false

4. floor() and ceil() functions

The floor() method takes a numeric number as an argument and returns the largest integer not greater than the input value. The ceil() method takes a numeric number as an argument and returns the smallest integer not smaller than the input value. A simple example would be

#floor method
import math
print ("math.floor(-23.11) : ", math.floor(-2.22))
print ("math.floor(300.16) : ", math.floor(40.17))
print ("math.floor(300.72) : ", math.floor(40.72))
#output
math.floor(-2.22) :  -3.0
math.floor(40.17) :  40.0
math.floor(40.72) :  40.0
#ceil method
import math
# prints the ceil using floor() method
print ("math.ceil(-23.11) : ", math.ceil(-2.22))
print ("math.ceil(300.16) : ", math.ceil(40.17))
print ("math.ceil(300.72) : ", math.ceil(40.72))
#output
math.ceil(-2.22) :  -2.0
math.ceil(40.17) :  41.0
math.ceil(40.72) :  41.0

5. Inspect object by dir()

We can inspect the object by simply calling dir() method. Here is the very simple example of using inspect object with dir() method. This saves a lot of time and we don't have to google everytime when we need it.

>>> test = "Sonika"
>>> print(dir(test))
['__add__', '__class__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__getnewargs__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mod__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rmod__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'capitalize', 'casefold', 'center', 'count', 'encode', 'endswith', 'expandtabs', 'find', 'format', 'format_map', 'index', 'isalnum', 'isalpha', 'isascii', 'isdecimal', 'isdigit', 'isidentifier', 'islower', 'isnumeric', 'isprintable', 'isspace', 'istitle', 'isupper', 'join', 'ljust', 'lower', 'lstrip', 'maketrans', 'partition', 'removeprefix', 'removesuffix', 'replace', 'rfind', 'rindex', 'rjust', 'rpartition', 'rsplit', 'rstrip', 'split', 'splitlines', 'startswith', 'strip', 'swapcase', 'title', 'translate', 'upper', 'zfill']
>>> test = [1,2]
>>> print(dir(test))
['__add__', '__class__', '__class_getitem__', '__contains__', '__delattr__', '__delitem__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getitem__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__iadd__', '__imul__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__iter__', '__le__', '__len__', '__lt__', '__mul__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__reversed__', '__rmul__', '__setattr__', '__setitem__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__subclasshook__', 'append', 'clear', 'copy', 'count', 'extend', 'index', 'insert', 'pop', 'remove', 'reverse', 'sort']

6. Reverse string with slice:

There are multiple ways to reverse string but this method has to be the best one. There are so many use case of slice as you can see here. To reverse string we do "someString"[::-1] . A simple use case is:

>>>print("Sonika"[::-1])
#output
akinoS

7. N times strings:

Printing n strings is easier than we thought it would be. Its quite self explanatory as following:

print("S" + "o"*2 + "n"*3 + "i"*4 +"k"*5 +"a"*6)
#output
Soonnniiiikkkkkaaaaaa

Hope this helps!

How to tweet via Python script?

Sonika Baniya — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 11:50:30 +0000

What do you need to install?

Python
Tweepy : Tweepy is a python library for accessing Twitter API.
Developer account in Twitter

Steps

Create a test file name test.py in your working directory.
Write the following here

import tweepy

# Consumer keys and access tokens from twitter developer console
CONSUMER_SECRET = '####'
CONSUMER_KEY = '###'
ACCESS_SECRET = '####'
ACCESS_KEY = '###'

# OAuth authentication connection from 
auth = tweepy.OAuthHandler(CONSUMER_KEY, CONSUMER_SECRET)
auth.set_access_token(ACCESS_KEY, ACCESS_SECRET)

# Creation of the actual interface, using authentication
tweet = tweepy.API(auth)

# Write tweet here
tweet.update_status("Hi from API" )

3.Run the following file by running python test.py command in your working directory and bam, you are done in 8 lines of code.

7 must-have extensions of VS Code

Sonika Baniya — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 11:49:42 +0000

In this blog, going to share the must-have extensions for beginners. A little background, I am a Software developer and mostly a backend developer but here, I have tried to list some frontend friendly extensions also.

1. Git history

Git is the most widely used Version Control System out of all. Git History is the first extension you must install if you use git as VCS in your project. This extension is majorly used for:
i. view and search git log with details and graph
ii. see history of file and line of code and also compare files across commits.
iii. compare branch and commits.
This will look something like this in below image in VS code extensions:

2. GitLens

I personally use GitLens just to know the author of line of code. This extension shows moreover shows total no of authors that have previously contributed and commit message in which loc is written. This ease the understanding of code written by other author. Check out other cool features of this extension here.

In this loc, we can see that gitlens is showing Sonika Baniya as the author and also 3 other authors. And Sonika Baniya wrote this line of code 2 months ago in the commit message “Data Import Validation”. If you hover here, we can also see the commit hash and the full commit message.

3. Waka time

Waka time plugins will help you track your programming in real-time. This plugin will give you a dashboard on metrics like branch, file, project that you spend your time on. Also, I love that Waka time sends you these metrics on email daily/weekly/monthly as you like. A sample email looks like this:

I have turned on my weekly email and wakatime gives you core time you spend on VS code, not the time you left VS Code open, and it's always a warm reflection to see how much you spend on your project and helps you on weekly planning to estimate task time. To learn more about wakatime click here.

4. Better Comments

This extension is for human-readable comments. This helps to create multiple categories in your comments. The comments can be categorized into alerts, queries, TODOS, important info. For me, its always like I am writing dirty code first just to ensure the logic is correct and then refactoring in multiple levels, so this is very important extension for me. To know more about this extension, checkout here.

5. Error lens

Additionally, Error Lens helps to stand out errors more visibly. Like some of the examples would be as shown in the picture below. If you are the one that takes longer to find out missing semicolons and indentation errors then this extension is definitely for you.

6. Material Icon Theme

Material Icon Theme helps to distinguish your files and their types with colorful icons. Additionally, if you are not a color person then you can customize your own color saturation and opacity. Also, your own custom icon. Honestly, the default material icon theme is so much better than native VS code icons. There are full guidelines on how to customize and more details here.

7. Remote SSH

If you are a non-devops developer but sometimes need to access your ssh server for deployment or other purposes then this extension is perfect for you. This extension allows you to open a remote folder on any remote machine, virtual machine, or container with a running SSH server and take full advantage of VS Code’s feature set. The tedious process just to update a small fix in the file is now 1000x easier with this extension. Also, no additional code needed to set this up. Check this cool extension here and save yourself.

7 must-have extensions of VS Code

Sonika Baniya — Wed, 31 Mar 2021 07:33:53 +0000

1. Git history

2. GitLens

3. Waka time

4. Better Comments

5. Error lens

6. Material Icon Theme

7. Remote SSH

Get locked out of 2 factor authentication of github

Sonika Baniya — Thu, 18 Mar 2021 05:08:48 +0000

I get locked out of github 2 factor authentication of github. I know my username and password. My country isn't listed in github messaging region. so i have to use other app like 'Authy' to get 2fa code. When i reinstall 'Authy' app i cant find the github acc that was connected in github. i also lost the recovery code that github has given me at the time of enabling 2fa.

So, as matter of fact i requested github to cancel my 2fa and i got the email that they will take 3-5 business days but it been 10 days. i haven't heard anything from github. i really need to access my github acc. anyone of you have faced this issue previously?

Laravel Caching

Sonika Baniya — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 06:11:46 +0000

In basic understanding, Caching makes things faster. If I ask you the computation of 4x5 then your immediate answer would be 20. Your brain has done this computation several times that it doesn’t even need to be done again. Imagine if you had to do it by drawing four lines repeating five times and count it like you did it for the first time in our childhood. Then it would be a very expensive process(in terms of processing and time). Exactly the same case.

Laravel provides API for various caching mechanisms. Cache configuration is located at config/cache.php in your laravel project. Laravel supports famous caching backends like Memcached, Redis. It looks something like:

Cache Usage

We can access Laravel cache in two ways i.e Factory and Repository. The factory provides access to all cache drivers defined. The repository is an implementation of the default cache driver for your application as specified by a cache configuration file. But on top of that, we use cache by cache facade as the best implementation of Factory and Repository as

Illuminate\Support\Facades\Cache

Cache methods

put():

This method takes three parameters i.e key, value and time in minutes.

Cache::put('cachekey', 'I am the cache',10);

get():

This method either takes one or two parameters i.e key and value after the cache is expired.

Cache::get('cachekey); 
Cache::get('cachekey', 'Cache died, so heres aftercache data');

has():

It returns a boolean value and takes a key as a parameter.

if(Cache::has('cachekey')){
     return true;
}

forever():

This method is useful when you want data to be available for user irrelevant of time. And it takes key and value as a parameter.

Cache::forever( 'cachekey', 'I am in the forever cache data!' );

forget():

This method is useful if you have used forever() method previously or you need to expire cache before the allocated time.

Cache::forget('cachekey');

Also, database caching and route caching can come into great handy.

Response time with and without cache

Let us take a simple example of accessing the Students model which stores the information of 40 students of a classroom.

Without any caching mechanism, simple PHP code to access it would be:

public function index() {
    $students = Students::all();
    return response()->json($students);
}

With the caching mechanism, it would be something like:

public function index() {
    $students = Cache::remember('students', 24*60, function() {
        return Students::all();
    });
    return response()->json($students);
}

Now, let’s take a look at response time in its 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th hit respectively.

The first hit takes a longer time because computationally, it is storing data in cache + retrieving data for end-user. But after the first hit, response time is much less. So, for the larger application Memcached, Redis driver is much recommended.

Atomic Lock

Atomic Lock means one server being used by one process at one time to avoid a race condition. The race condition is an undesirable condition which occurs when two task/process tries to access the same resource but due to the system’s nature needs to be done sequentially.

Cache::lock('key',10);

Cache Helper

If you reflect back from the start of this article to till now then you know one thing for sure i.e cache can be accessed from cache facade. In addition to that, the cache can also be accessed from cache global function.

cache(['key' => 'value'], $seconds);

Happy reading!

This article was originally published on https://www.techradiant.com/2020/02/20/laravel-caching/

Starting with Vue JS

Sonika Baniya — Sun, 23 Feb 2020 04:50:37 +0000

Vue JS is a progressive framework for building user interfaces. Vue.js features an incrementally adaptable architecture that focuses on declarative rendering and component composition. Advanced features required for complex applications such as routing, state management, and build tooling are offered via officially maintained supporting libraries and packages.
Vue.js is a system that enables us to declaratively render data to the DOM using straightforward template syntax. For example:

 <body>
<h4 id = "name"> My name is {{myname}}</h4>
</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script><script>
var demo = new Vue({
          el: '#name',
          data:{
                 myname: 'Sonika'
               }
           })
</script>

In this example, it looks pretty much simple HTML template render but behind the scene, everything is very much reactive and data and DOM are now linked.

Moving on to an example of binding in Vue js

<body>
<h4 v-bind:title= "bindedtitle" id = "name"> My name is {{message}}</h4>
</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script>
<script>
var demo = new Vue({
           el: '#name',
           data:{
                 message: 'Sonika',
                 bindedtitle : "this is title"
                }
          })
</script>

In the browser when you run the following code:

DOM content manipulation from Vue:

Here, in the above example, we see that change in the document model from the Vue component. And we can do it in Vue without touching DOM, unlike native Javascript. It’s one of the many reasons for a wide use case of Vue.

Now let’s see an example of handling user input in Vue js.

<body>
<div id = "name">
<h4 > My name is {{myname}}</h4>
<button @click="alertMessage">Alert Button</button>
<button @click="reverseName">Reverse Name</button>
</div>
</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script><script>
var demo = new Vue({
       el: '#name',
       data:{
             myname: 'Sonika',
             address: 'I live in Banasthali ',
            },
      methods:{
      alertMessage(){
           alert('You just clicked the button')
      },
     reverseName(){
          this.alertMessage()
      }
    }
})
</script>

Here, we update the state of the component from Vue without DOM manipulation. And the code just focuses on underlying logic only.

One simple example of conditioning in Vue before we wrap up:

<body>
<h4>Body Section</h4>
<h4 v-if = "nepali" id = "name"> My name is {{message}}</h4>
</body>
<script src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/npm/vue/dist/vue.js"></script><script>
   var demo = new Vue({
   el: '#name',
   data:{
     message: 'Sonika',
     nepali : true
   }
})
</script>

When we run code in browser, we see

In false conditioning we see,

Similarly, there is "v-for" directive for "for" loop. For further more details you and check the official documentation of Vue and also, reference here is taken from https://vuejs.org/v2/guide/

Happy reading!

This article was originally published at: https://www.techradiant.com/2020/01/30/basics-of-vue-js/