Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides?

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Date	Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:30:10 +1100
From	Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au>
To	python-list@python.org
Subject	Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides?
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On 22Feb2014 02:45, Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2014 12:12:00 -0800, ApathyBear wrote:
> > [...] or in any other language
> > for that matter? If an API is defining rules in C, is all hope lost for
> > trying to use it in python?
> 
> If an API is defined for a C library or function, then, no, you can't use 
> it in Python, or Lisp, or Ruby, just as you can't use a Lisp function in 
> C or Forth or Pascal. Not unless one or the other language makes special 
> provision to allow such cross-language communication.

What Steven says is true, at the simplest level.

However, MANY popular APIs that come with (for example) C libraries
and which are documented in terms of a C programming interface have
Python modules whose entire purpose in life is to present a Python
API which in turn accesses the C API for you.

For one example, consider the "bsddb" Python 2 module, which is
part of the standard library: if you have Python 2, you have the
bsddb module:

  http://docs.python.org/2/library/bsddb.html#module-bsddb

The BSD dbm libraries are C libraries with a C API. However, the
bsddb module is a Python module which contains python calls which
operate on BSD dbm files. If you're using Python, you can use this
module, which of course has a _Python_ API, to use the BSD dbm
library.

So: if you have some library which has a C API, it is possible that
there is a Python module which interfaces to it, and that module
will have a Python API. You may need to fetch such a module from a
third place, such as PyPI.

Cheers,
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au>

Who are all you people and why are you in my computer?  - Kibo

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Thread

New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? ApathyBear <nirchernia@gmail.com> - 2014-02-20 23:59 -0800
  Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-02-21 09:19 +0000
  Re:New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Dave Angel <davea@davea.name> - 2014-02-21 06:49 -0500
  Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? ApathyBear <nirchernia@gmail.com> - 2014-02-21 12:12 -0800
    Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Joel Goldstick <joel.goldstick@gmail.com> - 2014-02-21 15:21 -0500
    Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Roy Smith <roy@panix.com> - 2014-02-21 20:52 -0500
    Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Steven D'Aprano <steve+comp.lang.python@pearwood.info> - 2014-02-22 02:45 +0000
      Re: New to working with APIs, any good tutorials/books/guides? Cameron Simpson <cs@zip.com.au> - 2014-02-22 14:30 +1100

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