Automate the boring stuff with Python: practical programming for total beginners
- San Francisco No Starch Press 2015
- xxi, 479 p.
Table of contents Introduction Part I: Python Programming Basics Chapter 1: Python Basics Chapter 2: Flow Control Chapter 3: Functions Chapter 4: Lists Chapter 5: Dictionaries and Structuring Data Chapter 6: Manipulating Strings
Part II: Automating Tasks Chapter 7: Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions Chapter 8: Reading and Writing Files Chapter 9: Organizing Files Chapter 10: Debugging Chapter 11: Web Scraping Chapter 12: Working with Excel Spreadsheets Chapter 13: Working with PDF and Word Documents Chapter 14: Working with CSV Files and JSON Data Chapter 15: Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs Chapter 16: Sending Email and Text Messages Chapter 17: Manipulating Images Chapter 18: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse with GUI Animation
The best part of programming is the triumph of seeing the machine do something useful. Automate the Boring Stuff with Python frames all of programming as these small triumphs; it makes the boring fun.” —Hilary Mason, Founder of Fast Forward Labs and Data Scientist in Residence at Accel
Wil Wheaton on reading Automate the Boring Stuff with Python: “I’m having a lot of fun breaking things and then putting them back together, and just remembering the joy of turning a set of instructions into something useful and fun, like I did when I was a kid.”
Automate the Boring Stuff with Python is recommended on the Open Source Summer 2015 Reading List!
Download Chapter 17: Manipulating Images (PDF) Download the files used in the book Additional Online Resources If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do them for you? In Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required. Once you’ve mastered the basics of programming, you’ll create Python programs that effortlessly perform useful and impressive feats of automation to:
Search for text in a file or across multiple files Create, update, move, and rename files and folders Search the Web and download online content Update and format data in Excel spreadsheets of any size Split, merge, watermark, and encrypt PDFs Send reminder emails and text notifications Fill out online forms Step-by-step instructions walk you through each program, and practice projects at the end of each chapter challenge you to improve those programs and use your newfound skills to automate similar tasks.
Don’t spend your time doing work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you’ve never written a line of code, you can make your computer do the grunt work. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.
Note: The programs in this book are written to run on Python 3.
9781593275990
Python (Computer program language) Computer programming