{article Dive into Python}{title} {text}{/article}

Run Module

"""Cheap and simple API helper

This program is part of "Dive Into Python", a free Python book for
experienced programmers. Visit http://diveintopython.org/ for the
latest version.
"""

__author__ = "Mark Pilgrim (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)"
__version__ = "$Revision: 1.3 $"
__date__ = "$Date: 2004/05/05 21:57:19 $"
__copyright__ = "Copyright (c) 2001 Mark Pilgrim"
__license__ = "Python"

# While this is a good example script to teach about introspection,
# in real life it has been superceded by PyDoc, which is part of the
# standard library in Python 2.1 and later.
#
# Your IDE may already import the "help" function from pydoc
# automatically on startup; if not, do this:
#
# >>> from pydoc import help
#
# The help function in this module takes the object itself to get
# help on, but PyDoc can also take a string, like this:
#
# >>> help("string") # gets help on the string module
# >>> help("apihelper.help") # gets help on the function below
# >>> help() # enters an interactive help mode
#
# PyDoc can also act as an HTTP server to dynamically produce
# HTML-formatted documentation of any module in your path.
# That's wicked cool. Read more about PyDoc here:
# http://www.onlamp.com/pub/a/python/2001/04/18/pydoc.html

def info(object, spacing=10, collapse=1):
"""Print methods and doc strings.

Takes module, class, list, dictionary, or string."""
methodList = [e for e in dir(object) if callable(getattr(object, e))]
processFunc = collapse and (lambda s: " ".join(s.split())) or (lambda s: s)
print ("\n".join(["%s %s" %
(method.ljust(spacing),
processFunc(str(getattr(object, method).__doc__)))
for method in methodList]))

if __name__ == "__main__":
print (help.__doc__)

info(odbchelper)

info(odbchelper, 12)

info(odbchelper, collapse=0)

info(spacing=15, object=odbchelper)