Mike Driscoll

Python Developer at Ag Leader Technology @driscollis

Ankeny, US

Joined Jan 2012

https://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/

About

I have been programming in Python since 2006 and writing about Python almost as long on my blog. I have written several books on Python: Python 101, Python 201: Intermediate Python, wxPython Cookbook

Stats

Reputation:	7093
Pageviews:	3.5M
Articles:	49
Comments:	8

Articles

Python 101: Equality vs. Identity

Even experienced programmers find the difference subtle enough that they will introduce logic errors in their code due to a misunderstanding between the two.

Updated June 21, 2022

· 12,485 Views · 0 Likes

PySimpleGUI: How to Draw Shapes on an Image With a GUI

Let's add some flair to that image.

February 27, 2021

· 9,235 Views · 2 Likes

PySimpleGUI: Working With Multiple Windows

Let's give users some choices.

January 31, 2021

· 14,230 Views · 3 Likes

Getting GPS EXIF Data With Python

Let's pull some data.

January 24, 2021

· 11,843 Views · 2 Likes

Python 101 – Creating Multiple Processes

In this article, you will learn about the pros and cons of using processes, creating processes with multiprocessing, the subclassing process, and more.

July 16, 2020

· 17,094 Views · 3 Likes

wxPython Tutorial: Creating a PDF Merger/Splitter Utility

Easily merge and split PDFs with Python's easy-to-use PyPDF2 module.

September 18, 2019

· 7,707 Views · 4 Likes

An Intro to Flake8

Easily lint your code and enforce PEP8 compliance.

August 15, 2019

· 9,446 Views · 2 Likes

An Intro to StaticBox and StaticBoxSizers

In this quick tutorial, a Python expert walks us through creating simple Graphical User Interfaces using the wxPython GUI toolkit.

Updated May 13, 2019

· 5,138 Views · 1 Like

Getting Started With JupyterLab

Jupyter Notebook and JupyterLab have become popular among data pros for their ability to run Python and R. Read on to learn how to get started with JupyterLab.

April 17, 2019

· 23,609 Views · 4 Likes

Creating and Manipulating PDFs with pdfrw

If you need to work with PDFs in Python, then you need to read this post.

January 11, 2019

· 18,721 Views · 4 Likes

wxPython: Changing Custom Renderers for Columns/Rows

Here's a quick snippet to help show how to apply custom renderers in wxPython for columns and rows!

January 8, 2019

· 4,387 Views · 3 Likes

Python 3: Variable Annotations

Python is one of the most important programming languages for big data. Read on to learn more about Python and master this powerful language.

November 2, 2018

· 19,013 Views · 6 Likes

Creating Presentations With Jupyter Notebook

When you build a presentation using Jupyter Notebook, you'll be able to run code live from your slides.

October 22, 2018

· 18,660 Views · 3 Likes

How to Export Jupyter Notebooks Into Other Formats

Let's check out a tutorial that explains how to export Jupyter notebooks into other formats.

October 11, 2018

· 11,768 Views · 2 Likes

Extracting PDF Metadata and Text With Python

In this post, we take a look at how to use Python and some cool Python packages to extract a few different types of data from PDFs. Read on to get started!

Updated September 26, 2018

· 29,059 Views · 1 Like

Exporting Data From PDFs With Python

In this post, we will look at a variety of different packages that you can use to extract text. We will also learn how to extract some images from PDFs.

September 14, 2018

· 113,032 Views · 10 Likes

An Intro to PyPDF2

We take a look at the PyPDF2 package, a powerful library that lets you do some pretty interesting things with your PDF documents. Read on for the details!

June 11, 2018

· 66,780 Views · 3 Likes

Adding SVGs to PDFs With Python and ReportLab

Adding graphics into PDFs programmatically has never been easier! Read on to check out how to do it using Python in this post!

April 16, 2018

· 14,158 Views · 4 Likes

Splitting and Merging PDFs With Python

PyPDF2 is a powerful and useful package. If you need to manipulate existing PDFs, then this package might be right up your alley!

April 13, 2018

· 24,693 Views · 4 Likes

Flask 101: Filtering Searches and Deleting Data

To end this series on creating a basic web app using Python's Flask framework, we take a look at taking a search and filtering and deleting the data that's returned.

December 17, 2017

· 19,799 Views · 5 Likes

Flask 101: Adding, Editing, and Displaying Data

Last time we learned how to add a search form to our music database application. Of course, we still haven't added any data to our database, so the search fo...

December 15, 2017

· 142,539 Views · 7 Likes

In this post, we take a look at how to add a search form to your Flask-based web application. Read on for the awesome tutorial.

December 14, 2017

· 37,169 Views · 6 Likes

Add a Border to Your Photos With Python

Learn how you can use your programming skills to bring out your inner photographer, and enhance the look of your site via photo editing.

October 30, 2017

· 12,743 Views · 1 Like

Python: All About Decorators

Let's take an in-depth look at decorators in Python. Find out what they're all about, the various kinds, and how you can make use of them in your own code.

July 21, 2017

· 14,435 Views · 17 Likes

wxPython: Getting Data From All Columns in a ListCtrl

The ListCtrl does not make it very obvious how to get the data from all or any certain column. Look at how we might accomplish this task.

June 29, 2017

· 5,925 Views · 0 Likes

wxPython: Learning About TreeCtrls

In this article, we will focus on one of the wxPython GUI toolkit's many widgets: the regular wx.TreeCtrl. We'll also learn the basics of how to create and use one.

June 2, 2017

· 8,406 Views · 5 Likes

Getting Started with pywebview

Need to display some web content in your Python application? We take a look at the pywebview project to help you accomplish exactly that.

April 26, 2017

· 11,476 Views · 3 Likes

Python — How to Tell if a Function Has Been Called

For the Raspberry Pi devs: how to know for sure if a function has been called in your Python code.

March 14, 2017

· 21,038 Views · 8 Likes

New in Python: Syntax for Variable Annotations

Time to take a look at a new feature in Python, namely ''syntax for variable annotations.'' We'll take a look at what this is along with some examples.

January 17, 2017

· 6,448 Views · 1 Like

An Intro to aiohttp

Python 3.5 added some new syntax that allows developers to create asynchronous applications and packages easier. One such package is aiohttp.

November 11, 2016

· 14,406 Views · 1 Like

Refcards

Refcard #193

Core Python

Comments

Exporting Data From PDFs With Python

Sep 17, 2019 · Jordan Baker

PDFMiner.six is not outdated. I would use PDFPlumber now instead of Slate though. I haven't found a good solution for extracting images though.

Exporting Data From PDFs With Python

Sep 17, 2019 · Jordan Baker

PDFMiner doesn't always extract text the way you expect. It will give you the coordinates of where it found each word or character though, which you can use to reconstruct some things.

Flask 101: Filtering Searches and Deleting Data

Feb 01, 2019 · Duncan Brown

Check out SQL's ORDER BY command - https://www.w3schools.com/sql/sql_orderby.asp

Flask 101: How to Add a Search Form

Dec 14, 2017 · Duncan Brown

Thanks! Glad you liked it.

Python: All About Decorators

Aug 17, 2017 · Duncan Brown

It all depends on what your goals are. PHP tends to be primarily for web development. Python can be used for web development too, but it's used in much more than that and is more of a general purpose language. I personally love Python and its rich set of features.

An Intro to Encryption in Python 3

May 24, 2016 · Matthew Casperson

I updated the original article on my blog to fix a misunderstanding about Fernet. Fernet is a module, not a cryptographic algorithm. Instead the Fernet module actually implements an algorithm. Sorry if that bit is a bit wrong. Be sure to check out the updated original http://www.blog.pythonlibrary.org/2016/05/18/python-3-an-intro-to-encryption/ (which I will continue to update should any other issues arise)

Python CSV Files: Reading and Writing

Sep 05, 2014 · Alec Noller

Yes, this is a difference in Python 3. In Python 2, we needed to read the file in binary mode, but we no longer need to do that in Python 3. Since you are working with Excel, you might want to check out xlrd, which allows you to actually read Excel files themselves: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/xlrd

Python CSV Files: Reading and Writing

Sep 05, 2014 · Alec Noller