Introduction Python. - Cisco Academy

Introduction

This chapter of the course covers the following objectives:

Describe how Communities of Practice provide value to programmers.
Use Python to create programs that accept user input and read and write to external files.
Create a Python application that accesses an API based on user input and processes and displays the JSON data that is returned.

Lab - PC Setup for Workshop

In this lab, you will complete the following objectives in order to prepare your computer for the course:

Part 1. Install and verify Python
Part 2. Install Postman
Part 3. Install JSONView

Install and verify Python.

Step 1

Go to Python and download the most recent version of Phyton 3.
When installing, make sure you check the "Add Phyton 3.6 to Path" checkbox, when setup finished, click the "Disable path length limit" if this option is available for your installation.

Step 2

For the Windows OS, open a command prompt enter the command python, as shown in Example 1. The interactive interpreter should open. Type quit() to exit the Python interactive interpreter.

Example 1. Opening Python on a Windows Computer

c:\>python
Python 3.6.3 (v3.6.3:2c5fed8, Oct 3 2017, 17:26:49) [MSC v.1900 32 bit (Intel)] on win32
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> quit()

Example 2. Opening Python on a Mac or Linux Computer

$ python3
Python 3.5.2 (default, Oct 3 2017, 17:48:00) 
[GCC 5.4.0 20160609] on linux
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> quit()

Step 3

For the Windows OS, open IDLE from the Programs menu: Start > Python 3.6 > IDLE (Python 3.6 32-bit).
For the Mac or Linux OS, open a command prompt and enter the command idle3.
The IDLE shell should be open.

Step 4

The default Python installation comes with all the standard modules that most programmers would need to create applications. However, there are many more modules available that extend the functionality of Python. To keep initial installation of Python small, these modules are not includeing in the default package.
Returning to your command prompr window, use Python Package Index (accessed with the pip command) to download the modules requests and tabulate, as show for Windows in Example 3. for Linux and MAc, use pip3 install module_name.

Example 3. Installing Modules in Windows OS

Install Postman