explor 0.1.21

Powerful human-readable version of dir().

explor

Python object explorer which shows you what you can do with an object.

It takes the output from dir(), checks this and classifies it in a table. With that, you don't have to read the entire output of dir() and visually filter it for the relevant information.

Installation

Install the package:

pip install explor

or

pip install git+git://github.com/Talon24/explore

or

pip install git+https://github.com/Talon24/explore

Example

From this

# Very long line with very specific information, like all the dunder-methods
import datetime
print(dir(datetime.datetime.now()))
['__add__', '__class__', '__delattr__', '__dir__', '__doc__', '__eq__', '__format__', '__ge__', '__getattribute__', '__getstate__', '__gt__', '__hash__', '__init__', '__init_subclass__', '__le__', '__lt__', '__ne__', '__new__', '__radd__', '__reduce__', '__reduce_ex__', '__repr__', '__rsub__', '__setattr__', '__sizeof__', '__str__', '__sub__', '__subclasshook__', 'astimezone', 'combine', 'ctime', 'date', 'day', 'dst', 'fold', 'fromisocalendar', 'fromisoformat', 'fromordinal', 'fromtimestamp', 'hour', 'isocalendar', 'isoformat', 'isoweekday', 'max', 'microsecond', 'min', 'minute', 'month', 'now', 'replace', 'resolution', 'second', 'strftime', 'strptime', 'time', 'timestamp', 'timetuple', 'timetz', 'today', 'toordinal', 'tzinfo', 'tzname', 'utcfromtimestamp', 'utcnow', 'utcoffset', 'utctimetuple', 'weekday', 'year']

To this

from explor import explore as ex
import datetime

ex(datetime.datetime.now())

  Inherits: 
datetime -> date -> object
+ Class datetime ------------------+-----------------------+------+
| Methods                          | Data                  | Ops  |
+----------------------------------+-----------------------+------+
| astimezone      strftime         | day: int              | !=   |
| combine         strptime         | fold: int             | +    |
| ctime           time             | hour: int             | -    |
| date            timestamp        | max: datetime         | <    |
| dst             timetuple        | microsecond: int      | <=   |
| fromisocalendar timetz           | min: datetime         | ==   |
| fromisoformat   today            | minute: int           | >    |
| fromordinal     toordinal        | month: int            | >=   |
| fromtimestamp   tzname           | resolution: timedelta | hash |
| isocalendar     utcfromtimestamp | second: int           | str  |
| isoformat       utcnow           | tzinfo: NoneType      |      |
| isoweekday      utcoffset        | year: int             |      |
| now             utctimetuple     |                       |      |
| replace         weekday          |                       |      |
+----------------------------------+-----------------------+------+

Usage

The module's name is explore and it provides a function called explore(). To simplify exploration, I'd recommend aliasing it as something short like ex.

Settings

You can change the style of the table. The DoubleTable is the default, if the text viewer can't handle unicode, then the AsciiTable might be useful. Some examples to change the Table style:

import explor
explor.TABLETYPE = explor.terminaltables.AsciiTable
explor.TABLETYPE = explor.terminaltables.SingleTable
explor.TABLETYPE = explor.terminaltables.DoubleTable
explor.TABLETYPE = explor.terminaltables.GithubFlavoredMarkdownTable

Also, text output is colored by default, but you can disable it with:

import explor
explor.COLORIZE = False

Module

from explor import explore as ex
import pathlib

ex(pathlib)

  Description:
Object-oriented filesystem paths.

This module provides classes to represent abstract paths and concrete
paths with operations that have semantics appropriate for different
operating systems.
+ module: pathlib ------+---------------------+-----------------+
| Constants | Modules   | Functions           | Classes         |
+-----------+-----------+---------------------+-----------------+
| EBADF     | fnmatch   | urlquote_from_bytes | Path            |
| ELOOP     | functools |                     | PosixPath       |
| ENOENT    | io        |                     | PurePath        |
| ENOTDIR   | ntpath    |                     | PurePosixPath   |
| S_ISBLK   | os        |                     | PureWindowsPath |
| S_ISCHR   | posixpath |                     | Sequence        |
| S_ISDIR   | re        |                     | WindowsPath     |
| S_ISFIFO  | sys       |                     |                 |
| S_ISLNK   | warnings  |                     |                 |
| S_ISREG   |           |                     |                 |
| S_ISSOCK  |           |                     |                 |
+-----------+-----------+---------------------+-----------------+

Function

from explor import explore as ex
def a_function(pos: int, /, both: float, untyped=4, *, kw_only: str = "blue") -> complex:
    """Kinds of arguments."""
ex(a_function)

  Description:
Kinds of arguments.
+ Function a_function -> complex --------------------+
| Argument | Default | Type  | Kind                  |
+----------+---------+-------+-----------------------+
| pos      | ---     | int   | positional-only       |
| both     | ---     | float | positional or keyword |
| untyped  | 4       | Any   | positional or keyword |
| kw_only  | 'blue'  | str   | keyword-only          |
+----------+---------+-------+-----------------------+

Class

On Classes (Not instances), the constructor is also printed.

from explor import explore as ex
import requests
ex(requests.Request)

  Inherits: 
Request -> RequestHooksMixin -> object
  Description:
A user-created :class:`Request <Request>` object.
...
+ type: Request --+------+
| Functions       | Ops  |
+-----------------+------+
| deregister_hook | !=   |
| prepare         | <    |
| register_hook   | <=   |
|                 | ==   |
|                 | >    |
|                 | >=   |
|                 | hash |
|                 | str  |
+-----------------+------+
  Description:
A user-created :class:`Request <Request>` object.
...
+ Constructor -------+
| Argument | Default |
+----------+---------+
| method   | None    |
| url      | None    |
| headers  | None    |
| files    | None    |
| data     | None    |
| params   | None    |
| auth     | None    |
| cookies  | None    |
| hooks    | None    |
| json     | None    |
+----------+---------+

from explor import explore as ex
import fractions
ex(fractions.Fraction)

  Inherits: 
Fraction -> Rational -> Real -> Complex -> Number -> object
  Description:
This class implements rational numbers.
...
+ ABCMeta: Fraction ---------------+-----------------------+------------+
| Methods      | Functions         | Data                  | Ops        |
+--------------+-------------------+-----------------------+------------+
| from_decimal | as_integer_ratio  | denominator: property | !=  ==     |
| from_float   | conjugate         | imag: property        | %   >      |
|              | is_integer        | numerator: property   | *   >=     |
|              | limit_denominator | real: property        | **  abs    |
|              |                   |                       | +   bool   |
|              |                   |                       | +() divmod |
|              |                   |                       | -   float  |
|              |                   |                       | -() hash   |
|              |                   |                       | /   int    |
|              |                   |                       | //  round  |
|              |                   |                       | <   str    |
|              |                   |                       | <=         |
+--------------+-------------------+-----------------------+------------+
  Description:
This class implements rational numbers.
...
+ Constructor +---------+
| Argument    | Default |
+-------------+---------+
| numerator   | 0       |
| denominator | None    |
+-------------+---------+

Automatic import

If you have ipython, you can create a file in ~/.ipython/profile_default/startup/ that imports it, it will then be available at the start of ipython.

This can look like this:

from explor import explore as ex
from explor import explore_signature as exs
from explor import explore_object as exo

get_ipython().magic("%autocall 1")  # With this, it's callable without parens; e.g. `ex os.path`

More explanation here.

Limitations

The library won't always work on some builtin objects like print or libraries written in c, e.g. numpy.array.