If you’ve ever spent hours renaming files or updating hundreds of spreadsheet cells, you know how tedious tasks like these can be. But what if you could have your computer do this work for you?
In this fully revised third edition of Automate the Boring Stuff with Python, you’ll learn how to use Python to write programs that do in minutes what would take you hours to do by hand—no prior programming experience required. Early chapters will teach you the fundamentals of Python through clear explanations and engaging examples. You’ll write your first Python program; work with strings, lists, dictionaries, and other data structures; then use regular expressions to find and manipulate text patterns.
Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll tackle projects that teach you to use Python to automate tasks like:
Searching the web, downloading content, and filling out forms
Finding, extracting, and manipulating text and data in files and spreadsheets
Copying, moving, renaming, or compressing saved files on your computer
Splitting, merging, and extracting text from PDFs and Word documents
Interacting with applications through custom mouse and keyboard macros
Managing your inbox, unsubscribing from lists, and sending email or text notifications
New to this edition: All code and examples have been thoroughly updated. You’ll also find four new chapters on database integration, speech recognition, and audio and video editing, as well as 16 new programming projects and expanded coverage of developer techniques like creating command line programs.
Don’t spend your time on work a well-trained monkey could do. Even if you’ve never written a line of code, you can pass off that grunt work to your computer. Learn how in Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.
Author Bio
Al Sweigart is a professional software developer who teaches programming to kids and adults. Sweigart has written several bestselling programming books for beginners, including Invent Your Own Computer Games with Python, Cracking Codes with Python, and Coding with Minecraft, as well as those for intermediate-level programmers, like Beyond the Basic Stuff with Python and The Recursive Book of Recursion (all from No Starch Press).
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments Introduction
Chapter 1: Python Basics Chapter 2: if-else and Flow Control Chapter 3: Loops Chapter 4: Functions Chapter 5: Debugging Chapter 6: Lists Chapter 7: Dictionaries and Structuring Data Chapter 8: Strings and Text Editing Chapter 9: Text Pattern Matching With Regular Expressions Chapter 10: Reading and Writing Files Chapter 11: Organising Files Chapter 12: Designing and Deploying Command Line Programs Chapter 13: Web Scraping Chapter 14: Working with Excel Spreadsheets Chapter 15: Working with Google Sheets Chapter 16: SQLite Databases Chapter 17: PDF and Word Documents Chapter 18: CSV, JSON, and XML Files Chapter 19: Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs Chapter 20: Sending Email, Texts, and Push Notifications Chapter 21: Making Graphs and Manipulating Images Chapter 22: Recognising Text in Images Chapter 22: Controlling Keyboard and Mouse Chapter 23: Text-To-Speech and Speech Recognition Engines
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