PYTHON FOR NETWORKING & SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS (TTPS4824) Training

Attendees should have a working knowledge in developing basic Java 8 applications. Students should have basic development experience in any programming language, along with a working, user-level knowledge of Unix/Linux, Mac, or Windows.

Working within in an engaging, hands-on learning environment, guided by our expert Python practitioner, students will learn to:

• Create working Python scripts following best practices
• Use python data types appropriately
• Read and write files with both text and binary data
• Search and replace text with regular expressions
• Get familiar with the standard library and its work-saving modules
• Use lesser-known but powerful Python data types
• Create "real-world", professional Python applications
• Work with dates, times, and calendars
• Know when to use collections such as lists, dictionaries, and sets
• Understand Pythonic features such as comprehensions and iterators
• Write robust code using exception handling
• Automate network administrative tasks across distributed clients using SSH, REST, and Git

Session 1:  An Overview of Python

• What is python?
• An overview of Python
• What is python?
• Python Timeline
• Advantages/Disadvantages of Python
• Getting help with pydoc

Session 2:  The Python Environment

• Starting Python
• Using the interpreter
• Running a Python script
• Python scripts on Unix/Windows
• Editors and IDEs

Session 3:  Getting Started

• Using variables
• Builtin functions
• Strings
• Numbers
• Converting among types
• Writing to the screen
• Command line parameters

Session 4: Flow Control

• About flow control
• White space
• Conditional expressions
• Relational and Boolean operators
• While loops
• Alternate loop exits

Session 5: Sequences

• About sequences
• Lists and list methods
• Tuples
• Indexing and slicing
• Iterating through a sequence
• Sequence functions, keywords, and operators
• List comprehensions
• Generator Expressions
• Nested sequences

Session 6:  Working with files

• File overview
• Opening a text file
• Reading a text file
• Writing to a text file
• Reading and writing raw (binary) data
• Converting binary data with struct

Session 7:  Dictionaries and Sets

• About dictionaries
• Creating dictionaries
• Iterating through a dictionary
• About sets
• Creating sets
• Working with sets

Session 8:  Functions

• Defining functions
• Parameters 
• Global and local scope
• Nested functions
• Returning values

Session 9:  Sorting

• The sorted() function
• Alternate keys
• Lambda functions
• Sorting collections
• Using operator.itemgetter()
• Reverse sorting

Session 10:  Errors and Exception Handling

• Syntax errors
• Exceptions
• Using try/catch/else/finally
• Handling multiple exceptions
• Ignoring exceptions

Session 11:  Modules and Packages

• The import statement
• Module search path
• Creating Modules
• Using packages
• Function and Module aliases

Session 12:  Classes

• About o-o programming
• Defining classes
• Constructors
• Methods
• Instance data
• Properties
• Class methods and data

Session 13:  Regular Expressions

• RE syntax overview
• RE Objects
• Searching and matching
• Compilation flags
• Groups and special groups
• Replacing text
• Splitting strings

Session 14:  The standard library

• The sys module
• Launching external programs
• Math functions
• Random numbers
• The string module
• Reading CSV data

Session 15:  Dates and times

• Working with dates and times
• Translating timestamps
• Parsing dates from text
• Formatting dates
• Calendar data

Session 16: Working with the file system

• Paths, directories, and filenames
• Checking for existence
• Permissions and other file attributes
• Walking directory trees
• Creating filters with fileinput
• Using shutil for file operations

Session 17: Network services

• Grabbing web content
• Sending email

Session 18: RESTful Services

• REST Overview
• Essential RESTful services with Flask
• Consuming RESTful services
• Overview of Reactive Programming with RxPY

Session 19: Programmatic SSH

• SSH, SCP and SFTP Overview
• Essential Paramiko
• Maintaining multiple clients

Session 20: DevOps and GitPython

• DevOps Overview
• Git Overview
• Programmatic Git with GitPython