Context Managers, Decorators, and Google App Engine

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This month:

• We’ll get an in-depth talk on Python context managers from Kurt Neufeld. Context managers let you encapsulate code that has to run before or after some other action. One typical use is to automatically close a file after reading from it, even if an exception gets raised, but context managers have more powerful uses too.

• Decorators, which are functions or classes that can transform other functions or classes, will be covered by Mike Warren. He’ll go over exactly what that means and how it works, and show us examples like @memoize, which can automatically cache function results.

• Writing Python apps for Google App Engine—Abhinav Rastogi will give us an introduction, covering how to deploy your app, local development, testing, logging, and the features and restrictions of the platform. Follow along by registering a trial account at https://cloud.google.com . After the initial trial period, you can keep running your app for free up to the daily limits (https://cloud.google.com/appengine/docs/quotas).

• Walter Simbirski, City of Calgary Open Data Strategist, will tell us about an upcoming hackathon.

Doors open at 5:45 p.m. See you then!