This month mostly consisted of working through Automate the Boring Stuff (Sweigart, 2015); Think Python (Downey, 2015); and the end of Python Crash Course (Matthes, 2015).

I thoroughly enjoyed all three books, completing most of the exercises in Automate the Boring Stuff and Python Crash Course - the exception being the final project of Python Crash Course, the Django app. I made it up to the point of styling the app with Bootstrap. I then kinda got side-tracked with the testing of various Linux distributions instead. Though I really like the philosophy of Linux, I’m still going to stick with Windows for the time being.

Think Python was mostly a skim read and this probably didn’t do the book justice - I’m hoping to go back and work through the exercises at some point.

I started two projects:

  • a data entry automation program that uses GUI automation to fill out forms;

  • and a program that parses pdf documents to automate the production of MARC 21 library catalogue records.

The data entry automation program uses a mixture of regular expressions to parse plain text copied from a CRM system, determines the actions to take depending on the data parsed, and then finally fulfils them using pyautogui. Using an API would make a lot more sense, however it’s still fun to see the mouse and keyboard take on a life of their own. I’ve also been looking into source control via Git - I’ll push the project to Github at a later date.

The second program pulls pdf files from my organisation’s website, parses the content and produces skeleton MARC 21 library catalogue records. The records can then later be imported into the Library Management System. The program makes use of the pymarc Python module to output the data in the correct format. While the first program was mostly built as a learning exercise, this program should actually prove quite useful in my job.