Extra credit regular expressions

Question

Hi everyone! I've tried to complete the extra credit task for the regular expressions course. What do you think about my code? How could I make it better?

Thank you very much in advance for all of your answers!

person_info.py

class Person:
    def __init__(self, **kwargs):
        for key, value in kwargs.items():
            setattr(self, key, value)

book.py

import re

from person_info import Person


class Book:
    def __init__(self):
        book = self.write_book()
        print("search a person details or [Q]uit")
        while True:
            search_person = input("name and surname > ").lower()
            if search_person == "q":
                print("bye!")
                exit()
            elif search_person in book.keys():
                print(vars(book[search_person]))

    def write_book(self):
        names_file = open("names.txt", encoding="utf-8")
        data = names_file.read()
        names_file.close()

        pattern = re.compile(r'''
            ^(?P<last>[-\w ]*),\s(?P<first>[-\w ]+)\t # last and first name
            (?P<email>[-\w\d.+]+@[-\w\d.]+)\t # Email
            (?P<phone>\(?\d{3}\)?-?\s?\d{3}-\d{4})?\t # phone numbers
            (?P<job>[\w\s]+,\s[\w\s.]+)\t # job and company
            (?P<twitter>@[\w\s]+)?$ # twitter
        ''', re.X | re.M)

        addresses = {}
        for match in pattern.finditer(data):
            name = match.group("first") + " " +  match.group("last")
            addresses[name.lower().replace(", ", " ")] = Person(**match.groupdict())

        return addresses

Book()

Answer 1 · 2017-10-28T08:53:19Z

October 28, 2017 8:53am

Hi Francesco! As Christopher mentioned, your code is well organized and neat. I have a few observations.

Your code demonstrates that you understand how class can be called and how methods work. This is a great start!

Python classes usually represent an object with attributes to hold data and methods to manipulate that data. When a class object is instantiated, an instance is returned and other code then operates on that instance.

In your code, the class is being used as a manner of flow control, in that, the default __init__ execution is being used to start the execution flow and, in turn, calling the method write_book more as a helper function than as a method that modifies the class instance.

I noticed the internal book variable is not saved. This means it's discarded as soon as the __init__ method exits.

The purpose of the __init__ method is to initiate the class attributes. This follows after hidden execution if the inherented method __new__ (from the base class object) that creates the class instance.

I also noticed, the self attribute is never referenced by write_book. This would make it a static method that doesn't necessarily need to be inside the class. It could be a helper function outside the class.

Try to think of classes as a way to organize data that might be stored in a database. Since there is no data stored as attributes inside the class, there isn't a need for the class at all.

I would suggest

not using a class
move both methods outside the class as regular functions
rename __init__ to "main"
remove the "self" parameters
call main() instead of Book() to initiate the flow

Now you have a principle function main that uses the helper function write_book.

As a bonus suggestion, I would add the following code that only calls main() if book.py is run interactively and not if book.py is imported by another file.

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

Post back if you have any questions. Good luck!!!

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Francesco Cabiddu

Francesco Cabiddu

Extra credit regular expressions

Christopher Shaw

Christopher Shaw

1 Answer

Chris Freeman

Chris Freeman