2.3. PEP-8 Compatibility

class pyslet.pep8.MigratedClass

Base class to assist with method renaming. This base class defines a metaclass for use in conjunction with the @old_method decorator. It automatically provides old method definitions that generate warnings when first called.

Any derived classes will also be defined with this metaclass (providing they don’t themselves use an overriding metaclass of course). Therefore, the associated metaclass also checks each derived class to see if it has overridden any old methods, renaming those definitions accordingly in order to preserve the purpose of the original decorator. An example will help:

class Base(pep8.MigratedClass):

    @pep8.old_method('OldName')
    def new_name(self):
        return "Found it!"

With these definitions, the author of Base has renamed a method previously called ‘OldName’ to ‘new_name’. Authors of older code are unaware and continue to use the old name. The metaclass provides the magic to ensure their code does not break:

>>> b = Base()
>>> b.OldName()
__main__:1: DeprecationWarning: Base.OldName is deprecated, use,
    new_name instead
'Found it!'

The warning is only shown when python is run with the -Wd option.

The metadata also handles the slightly harder problem of dealing with derived classes that must work with new code:

class Derived(Base):

    def OldName(self):
        return "My old code works!"

>>> d = Derived()
>>> d.new_name()
'My old code works!'

Although more complex, the same is true for class methods. When using the @classmethod decorator you must put it before the old_method decorator, like this:

@classmethod
@pep8.old_method('OldClassMethod')
def new_class_method(cls):
    return "Found it!"

And similarly for staticmethod:

@staticmethod
@pep8.old_method('OldStaticMethod')
def new_static_method():
    return "Found it!"

Again, older code that uses old names will have their calls automatically redirected to the new methods and derived classes that provide an implementation using the old names will find that their implementation is also callable with the new names.

The power of metaclasses means that there is no significant performance hit as the extra work is largely done during the definition of the class so typically affects module load times rather than instance creation and method calling. Calling the old names is slower as calls are directed through a wrapper which generates the deprecation warnings. This provides an incentive to migrate older code to use the new names of course.”“”

pyslet.pep8.make_attr_name(name)

Converts name to pep8_style

Upper case letters are replaced with their lower-case equivalent optionally preceded by ‘_’ if one of the following conditions is met:

  • it was preceded by a lower case letter
  • it is preceded by an upper case letter and followed by a lower-case one

As a result:

make_attr_name('aName') == 'a_name'
make_attr_name('ABCName') == 'abc_name'
make_attr_name('Name') == 'name'