qanda 0.1dev

Examples

>>> from qanda import prompt
>>> prompt.string ("What is your name")
What is your name: Foo
>>> fname = prompt.string ("Your friends name is",
                help="I need to know your friends name as well before I talk to you.",
                hints="first name",
                default='Bar',
        )

I need to know your friends name as well before I talk to you.
Your friends name is (first name) [Bar]:
>>> print fname
Bar
>>> years = prompt.integer ("And what is your age", min=1, max=100)
And what is your age: 101
A problem: 101 is higher than 100. Try again ...
And what is your age: 28

Central concepts

qanda packages all question-asking methods in a Session class. This allows the appearance and functioning of all these methods to be handled consistently and modified centrally. However, you don’t necessarily have to create a Session to use it - there’s pre-existing Session in the variable called prompt:

>>> from qanda import Session
>>> s = Session()
>>> from qanda import prompt
>>> type (prompt)
<class 'qanda.session.Session'>

The question methods are named after the type of data they elicit:

>>> print type(prompt.integer ("Pick a number"))
Pick a number: 2
<type 'int'>
>>> print type(prompt.string ("Pick a name"))
Pick a name: Bob
<type 'string'>

Many of the question methods with accept a list of “converters”, each of which is used to sucessively transform or validate user input. If input fails validation, the question is posed again. qanda supplies a number of basic validators:

ToInt, ToFloat

Convert inputs to other types

Regex

nly allow values that match a certain pattern

Range

Check that input falls within given bounds

Length

Check that input length falls within given bounds

Synonyms

Map values to other values

Vocab

Ensure values fall within a fixed set