Google Application Utilities for Python

This project is a small collection of utilities for building Python applications. It includes some of the same set of utilities used to build and run internal Python apps at Google.

Features:

• Simple application startup integrated with python-gflags.
• Subcommands for command-line applications.
• Option to drop into pdb on uncaught exceptions.
• Helper functions for dealing with files.
• High-level profiling tools.
• Timezone-aware wrappers for datetime.datetime classes.
• Improved TestCase with the same methods as unittest2, plus helpful flags for test startup.
• google_test setuptools command for running tests.
• Helper module for creating application stubs.

Installation

To install the package, simply run: python setup.py install

Google-Style Tests

Google-style tests (those run with basetest.main()) differ from setuptools-style tests in that test modules are designed to be run as main. Setting up your project to use Google-style tests is easy:

1. Create one or more test modules named ‘*_test.py’ in a directory. Each test module should have a main block that runs basetest.main():

   In tests/my_test.py

   from google.apputils import basetest

class MyTest(basetest.TestCase): def testSomething(self): self.assertTrue(‘my test’)

if name == ‘main‘: basetest.main()

2. Add a setup requirement on google-apputils and set the test_dir option:

   In setup.py

   setup( … setup_requires = [‘google-apputils>=0.2’], test_dir = ‘tests’, )

3. Run your tests: python setup.py google_test

Google-Style Stub Scripts

Google-style binaries (run with app.run()) are intended to be executed directly at the top level, so you should not use a setuptools console_script entry point to point at your main(). You can use distutils-style scripts if you want.

Another alternative is to use google.apputils.run_script_module, which is a handy wrapper to execute a module directly as if it were a script:

1. Create a module like ‘stubs.py’ in your project:

   In my/stubs.py

   from google.apputils import run_script_module

def RunMyScript(): import my.script run_script_module.RunScriptModule(my.script)

def RunMyOtherScript(): import my.other_script run_script_module.RunScriptModule(my.other_script)

2. Set up entry points in setup.py that point to the functions in your stubs module:

   In setup.py

   setup( … entry_points = {

      'console_scripts': [
          'my_script = my.stubs:RunMyScript',
          'my_other_script = my.stubs.RunMyOtherScript',
          ],
      },

   )

There are also useful flags you can pass to your scripts to help you debug your binaries; run your binary with –helpstub to see the full list.