superhelp 0.9.18

SuperHELP - Help for Humans!

https://git.nzoss.org.nz/pyGrant/superhelp

version number: 0.9.18 author: Grant Paton-Simpson

Overview

SuperHELP is Help for Humans! The goal is to provide customised help for simple code snippets. SuperHELP is not intended to replace the built-in Python help but to supplement it for basic Python code structures. SuperHELP will also be opinionated. Help can be provided in a variety of contexts including the terminal and web browsers (perhaps as part of on-line tutorials).

Quick Start

Click the button below to open a Binder Jupyter Notebook you can play around in e.g. get advice on a snippet or line of Python

or put the following at the top of your Python script and run the script:

import superhelp
superhelp.this(__file__)

Installation

Note - Python 3.6+ only. If you have an older version of Python use the Binder Jupyter Notebook button instead (see higher up)

To install

1. Use pip e.g.

   $ pip3 install superhelp

or similar

$ python3 -m pip install superhelp

2. Or clone the repo

   $ git clone https://git.nzoss.org.nz/pyGrant/superhelp.git $ python3 setup.py install

Example Use Cases

• Charlotte is a Python beginner and wants to get advice on a five-line function she wrote to display greetings to a list of people. She learns about Python conventions for variable naming and better ways of combining strings.

• Avi wants to get advice on a named tuple. He learns how to add doc strings to individual fields.

• Zach is considering submitting some code to Stack Overflow but wants to improve it first (or possibly get ideas for a solution directly). He discovers that a list comprehension might work. He also becomes aware of dictionary comprehensions for the first time.

• Noor has written a simple Python decorator but is wanting to see if there is anything which can be improved. She learns how to use functool.wrap from an example provided.

• Al is an experienced Python developer but tends to forget things like doc strings in his functions. He learns a standard approach and starts using it more often.

• Moana wants to check the quality of some code before including it in her project. She learns about some issues and makes improvements before integrating it.

Example Usage

Screenshot from HTML output

Screenshot from Terminal output

Screenshot from Markdown output

Using SuperHELP on the Notebook

Add new cell at end with content like:

%%shelp

def sorted(my_list):
    sorted_list = my_list.sort()
    return sorted_list

and run it to get advice.

The notebook has more detailed instructions at the top.

Using SuperHELP on a Local Installation

Inside your script

Put the following at the top of your script and then run the script (note - there are two underscores on either side of file):

import superhelp
superhelp.this(__file__)

If you don't want the default web output you can specify another displayer such as 'cli' (command line interface) or 'md' (markdown):

import superhelp
superhelp.this(__file__, displayer='md')

If you don't want the default 'Extra' level of messages you can specify a different message_level ('Brief' or 'Main') e.g.

import superhelp
superhelp.this(__file__, displayer='md', message_level='Brief')

or:

import superhelp
superhelp.this(__file__, message_level='Main')

From the command line (terminal / console)

$ shelp -h  ## get help on usage

$ shelp --snippet "people = ['Tomas', 'Sal', 'Raj']" --displayer html --level Main
$ shelp -s "people = ['Tomas', 'Sal', 'Raj']" -d html -l Main

$ shelp --file-path my_snippet.py --displayer cli  --level Extra
$ shelp -f snippet1.txt -d cli -l Brief

$ shelp  ## to see advice on an example snippet displayed (level Extra)

Stretch Ideas

• Extend beyond standard library into popular libraries like requests, bottle, flask etc.