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Courseware

Fast-track Python course manual

Here are the chapters included in this course manual (we use exactly the same manuals for our classroom and online Python courses).

Click here to download a sample of the first two chapters of this Fast-track Python manual, or review how to license our courseware.

Chapter 1 - INTRODUCING PYTHON▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
1.1	Installing Python		10
1.2	Choosing an Editor		11

Chapter 2 - VISUAL STUDIO CODE▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
2.1	Getting Started with VS Code	Installing Visual Studio Code Changing your Theme The Activity Bar	12
2.2	Installing Extensions	Installing the Python Extension	14
2.3	The Terminal Window	Viewing Terminal Windows Interactive Python Sessions	15
2.4	Files and Folders	Opening a Folder Creating Python Files	15
2.5	Running Programs	Clearing the Terminal Window Three Ways to Run a Program	17
2.6	Basic Debugging	Setting and Unsetting Breakpoints Debugging	18

Chapter 3 - BASIC CODING▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
3.1	Comments	Single-line Comments Multi-line Comments Commenting Out Lines (and Uncommenting)	19
3.2	Variables	Declaring Variables Variable Types Determining Type Assigning Values to Variables Deleting Variables	19
3.3	Rules of Arithmetic		23
3.4	Basic Strings	New Lines and Tabs Quotation Marks Backslash Characters Concatenating Text Converting Numbers to Text Getting Inputs from Users	24
3.5	Testing Conditions using If	Simple Conditions Multiple Conditions Testing for Equality Combining and Negating Conditions	26
3.6	Testing Conditions using Match	Testing a Discrete Set of Conditions Testing Ranges	28

Chapter 4 - CUSTOMISING VISUAL STUDIO CODE▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
4.1	Configuring VS Code Settings	Changing Settings using The Command Palette Changing Settings using the Menu Using Settings (JSON) Default Settings and JSON View Copying Default Settings to Customise Them Typical Default Settings	29
4.2	The Code Runner Extension	Installing the Extension Running Programs Changing the Run Key Combination Customising Code Runner	32
4.3	Other Useful VS Code Tips	Using Multiple Insertion Points Extending the Cursor Point Up or Down Selecting Rectangles of Code Global Changes using Multiple Insertion Points The Easiest Way to Rename Variables Using Zen Mode Expanding and Collapsing Code	35

Chapter 5 - JUPYTER NOTEBOOKS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
5.1	Introducing Jupyter Notebooks	What is a Jupyter Notebook? The Benefits of Jupyter Notebooks	38
5.2	Installing Jupyter Notebooks in VS Code	Step 1 - Instal the Jupyter Extension Step 2 - Create a Notebook Step 3 – Select a Kernel Step 4 – Trying to Install the JN Kernel Package Step 5 – Adding a Virtual Environment	39
5.3	Working with Cells	Adding Markdown Moving Cells Joining Cells Splitting Cells Deleting Cells	42
5.4	Running Code	Running a Cell’s Code Running All Cells’ Code	44
5.5	Debugging Code	Debugging a Cell Using Jupyter Variables View	45

Chapter 6 - VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENTS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
6.1	What Virtual Environments Are		46
6.2	Creating a Virtual Environment	Creating and Opening a Folder Creating a Virtual Environment Structure of a Virtual Environment Activating a Virtual Environment Selecting an Interpreter	47

Chapter 7 - IMPORTING MODULES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
7.1	Importing Modules	Importing a Module Giving Modules Aliases Importing Specific Functions Importing Functions and Using Aliases	51
7.2	Some Useful Built-In Modules		53
7.3	Using External Modules	Installing a Module Using Installed Modules Module Not Found Error Listing External Modules Viewing External Modules	54

Chapter 8 - FORMATTING TEXT AND NUMBERS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
8.1	Basic Ways to Format Output	Using the F Prefix Using the Format Function Placeholder Order can Vary or be Omitted	57
8.2	Formatting Numbers		59

Chapter 9 - RANGES AND LOOPS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
9.1	While Loops	Syntax of the While Command Example of a While Loop Using Else with While	60
9.2	Break, Continue and Pass		62
9.3	For Loops		63
9.4	Ranges		64

Chapter 10 - DEBUGGING▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
10.1	Overview		65
10.2	Preparing to Debug	Step 1 – Creating a Configuration File Step 2 - Setting a Breakpoint Step 3 – Turning off the JustMyCode Flag	66
10.3	Debugging		68
10.4	Viewing and/or Changing Variable Values	The Variables Pane Watching Variables and Expressions The Debug Console	69
10.5	Breakpoints	Conditional Breakpoints Disabling Breakpoints Deleting Breakpoints Removing or Disabling All Breakpoints	71
10.6	Debugging Function Calls	Stepping Into, Over and Out of Functions The Call Stack Function Breakpoints	73
10.7	Logging Breakpoints		75

Chapter 11 - SEQUENCES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
11.1	Introduction to Sequences	Main Types of Sequences in Python Reminder of Iterating Over Sequences	76
11.2	Tuples versus Lists	Mutability (Lists versus Tuples)	77
11.3	Slicing Sequences	Examples of Slicing for Lists Examples of Slicing for Ranges Examples of Slicing for Strings Missing Items when Slicing (Step Values)	78
11.4	Joining and Splitting Sequences	Joining Sequences Together Concatenating Sequence Members Splitting Strings to Generate Sequences Splitting a String into Before and After Text	81
11.5	Unpacking Sequences		83
11.6	Working with Sequences	Getting the Length of a Sequence Getting the Number of Items of a Specific Value Aggregating a Sequence’s Items Getting the Index Number of an Item Returning Sequence Index Numbers and Values Mixing Data Types	84
11.7	Examples of Sequences	Listing the Files in a Folder (ListDir) Listing the Files in a Folder using Glob Dividing Text into Lists of Words or Phrases A Tuple Listing Built-In Module Names Scraping Websites for Links	87

Chapter 12 - MANIPULATING LISTS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
12.1	Adding and Removing Items	Inserting Items Appending to and Extending Lists Removing Items from Lists by Value Popping Items from a List by Position Clearing the Contents of Lists	90
12.2	Changing the Order of Lists	Sorting Lists Reversing Lists	93
12.3	Shallow and Deep Copying of Lists	Assigning is not Copying Shallow Copying Deep Copying	94

Chapter 13 - COMPREHENSIONS AND GENERATORS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
13.1	Comprehensions	Basic Comprehensions Comprehensions with Conditions Multiple Loops within Comprehensions	96
13.2	Generators	Disadvantages of Generators	98

Chapter 14 - FILES AND FOLDERS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
14.1	Writing to Text Files		99
14.2	Using With to Close Files Automatically		100
14.3	Reading Files	Checking if Files and Folders Exist Reading Line by Line or Reading Characters Reading All the Lines in a File using Readlines Reading All the Lines in a File by Looping	101
14.4	Looping Over Files	Looping Over Files in a Folder Processing Files in a Folder Looping Recursively	103

Chapter 15 - ERROR-HANDLING▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
15.1	Trapping for Errors	Error Types Trapping General Errors Trapping Specific Errors The Full Range of Commands	105
15.2	Raising Exceptions		107

Chapter 16 - NUMBERS, STRINGS AND DATES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
16.1	Overview		108
16.2	Working with Numbers	Mathematical Operators Built-in Numerical Functions Math Functions	109
16.3	Working with Boolean Values	Boolean Operators All and Any	111
16.4	Working with Dates (and Times)	Getting Dates (and Times) Formatting Dates Formatting Times Displaying Calendar Months Displaying Day and Month Names	112
16.5	Working with Strings	Escape Characters Avoiding Escape Characters Joining and Splitting Text Repeating Text Extracting Text (Slicing) Counting and Length Changing Case Padding Removing and Replacing Text Translating Text Finding Text Checking Text Content	115

Chapter 17 - SETS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
17.1	Some Set Concepts		121
17.2	Working with Sets	Creating Sets Set Operations	122
17.3	Converting between Sets and Lists	Converting Sets to Lists Converting Lists to Sets	123
17.4	Examples of the Use of Sets	Counting Unique Letters or Words Finding the Differences between Lists	125

Chapter 18 - DICTIONARIES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
18.1	Creating Dictionaries	What is a Dictionary? Creating Dictionaries	127
18.2	Using Dictionaries	Looking Up Items Looping Over Dictionary Items Adding. Editing and Deleting Items Sorting Dictionaries	128

Chapter 19 - WRITING FUNCTIONS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
19.1	The Need for Functions	Advantages of Using Functions	130
19.2	Writing a Function	Step 1 – Identifying the Input Arguments Step 2 – Specifying the Output Data Type Step 3 – Reviewing the Syntax Required Step 4 – Writing your Functions	131
19.3	Learning Points	Variable Names are Isolated Arguments can have Different Names Functions can be Declared in any Order Your Function could Crash in Many Ways Data Types are for Guidance Only	133
19.4	Ways to Pass Arguments	Arguments by Name or Position Forcing Positional or Named Arguments Optional Arguments	136
19.5	Arbitrary and Keyword Arguments	Passing an Unknown Number of Argument Values Passing an Arbitrary Set of Arguments	138
19.6	Using Modules for Functions		140
19.7	Modular Programming		141
19.8	Docstrings		142

Chapter 20 - SCRAPING WEBSITES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
20.1	Case Study		143
20.2	Preparation for Web Scraping	Understand the Underlying HTML Understanding the Limitations	144
20.3	Understanding HTML	The Document Object Model (DOM) HTML Tags Tag Attributes Classes and Ids	145
20.4	Getting Started	Choosing a Web Scraping Tool Limitations of the Requests Module Installing BeautifulSoup Getting Help	147
20.5	Getting HTML	Browsing a Web Site Possible HTML Parsers Using HTML from File	149
20.6	Ways to Navigate	Chaining Elements Getting a List of Relatives of an Element Example: Contents versus Descendants Example: Showing All Text	151
20.7	Getting Output		153
20.8	Finding Elements	Finding Elements by Tag Finding Elements by Attribute Finding Attributes by Class Non-recursive Finds	154
20.9	Searching Using CSS Selectors	Example: Finding Elements of Given Class Finding Elements within a Given Id	156

Chapter 21 - WORKING WITH EXCEL▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
21.1	Getting Started with Openpyxl	Installing Openpyxl Getting Help with OpenPyXl	157
21.2	Working with Workbooks	Creating and Saving Workbooks Opening and Closing Workbooks	158
21.3	Working with Worksheets	Inserting Worksheets Our Example Workbook Getting a List of Worksheet Names Getting a Worksheet Itself Getting and Setting the Active Worksheet A Worked Example Looping over Worksheets	159
21.4	Working with Cells	Referring to Single Cells Useful Cell Properties	162
21.5	Looping over Cells	Looping over Row and/or Column Numbers Offsetting Cells	163

Chapter 22 - OTHER FILE TYPES▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
22.1	Overview		164
22.2	Linking to SQL Server (or Other Databases)	Importing Pyodbc Creating a Connection Creating a Cursor Choosing a Fetch Method A Full Worked Example Inserting, Updating and Deleting Data Running Stored Procedures with Parameters	165
22.3	CSV Files	Writing CSV Files Reading CSV Files	169
22.4	JSON Files	Serialisation and Deserialisation Conversions Loading and Dumping Writing to JSON Files Reading from JSON Files Reading an External JSON File	170

Chapter 23 - NUMPY▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
23.1	Overview	Our Example Advantages of NumPy Some NumPy Terms	173
23.2	Creating Arrays	Data Types Standard Arrays Filling Arrays Automatically Filling Arrays with Pre-set Values Filling Arrays with Random Numbers Filling Arrays from Sequences	175
23.3	Working with Parts of an Array	Slicing Arrays Another Slicing Example	178
23.4	Array Maths	Aggregating Array Multiplication and Broadcasting Matrix Multiplication Scalar (Elementwise) Operations	180
23.5	Operations on Arrays	Transposing an Array Flattening or Ravelling an Array Changing Array Elements Reshaping and Resizing Arrays Joining Arrays (Stacking and Concatenating) Other Array Operations	183

Chapter 24 - PANDAS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
24.1	Overview	Why Use Pandas not Excel?	186
24.2	Creating Dataframes and Series	Creating Dataframes Creating Series	187
24.3	Reading and Writing Dataframes	Reading from Excel or CSV Files Reading in a SQL Server Table Writing to CSV Writing to Excel Writing to a SQL Server Table	188
24.4	Viewing Dataframe Information	Viewing Summary Information about your Dataframe Using the Data Wrangler Extension	191
24.5	Showing Parts of a Dataframe	Top and Bottom Rows (Heads and Tails) Picking Out Particular Series or Columns Filtering Dataframes Slicing Rows using ILOC Returning Indexed Rows Only using LOC	193
24.6	Aggregating Data	Single Statistics Statistics for Multiple Columns Showing Multiple Statistics Showing Grouped Statistics	195
24.7	Calculations with Columns	Getting at the Text in a Column Mathematical Calculations on Columns Working with Dates	197
24.8	Other Dataframe Operations	Renaming Columns Sorting Dataframes Joining Dataframes Together Removing Duplicates	199

Chapter 25 - MATPLOTLIB▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
25.1	Introducing Matplotlib		201
25.2	Getting Started	Installing and Importing the Necessary Modules Creating a Basic Chart	202
25.3	Getting Data for Charting	Example of Charting Arrays Example of Charting Dataframes (via Excel) Example of Charting Dataframes (via SQL Server) Using Functions to Get Data	203
25.4	Implicit versus Explicit Referencing		207
25.5	Figures, Axes and Subplots	How Matplotlib Draws Multiple Charts The Correct Terminology Creating a Single Axes Figure Creating Multiple Axes	208
25.6	Formatting	Referring to Colours Line Styles Legends Setting the Grid Background Colours	211
25.7	Chart types		214
25.8	Text boxes and annotations		214
25.9	Different Chart Types		215
25.10	Style Sheets	Listing Existing Styles Referencing a Style Creating a Custom Style Getting Style Syntax from the Runtime Configuration File	215
25.11	Saving and Closing Charts	Saving Charts as Images Closing Charts	218

Chapter 26 - POWER BI AND PYTHON▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
26.1	Preparing for Python		219
26.2	Getting Data from Python	Creating your Dataframe Starting to Create a Python Data Source Finishing the Process	220
26.3	Power BI Python Visuals	Starting your Visual Creating the Visual Seeing the Full Code	222

Chapter 27 - PYTHON CODING USING AI TOOLS▼

Section	Title	Subsections	Page
27.1	Choosing an AI Tool		224
27.2	Generating Code	Our Example – Scraping a Website A Critique of the Code Generated Problems with the Code Simplifying the Code	225
27.3	Refactoring / Changing Code	Global Variable Changes Stylistic Changes	228
27.4	Optimising Code	Writing Code more Efficiently Changing the Algorithm	229
27.5	Debugging	Our Example – Reading a Shopping List What to Ask Listing the Bugs	230
27.6	Researching Modules		232

If you book a place on one of our courses you will automatically get access to the relevant courseware manual online, and also have the option to receive a paper copy of it.

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