Blogs

MySQL is an ubiquitous database server. Many hosts, like Interserver.net offer unlimited MySQL databases with a $4/month plan. With their hosting, you can also setup as many PHP, Python, Ruby, or Node.js apps.

There are a few libraries available, but the one I'm focusing on is PyMySQL, a pure Python implementation. This version is the easiest to install with the least amount of dependencies and most portable.

You could use an ORM like SQLAlchemy or Django. Those options are good if you need to easily switch between MySQL and another database like SQLite. Here, we will focus only on MySQL and assume this is the only database being used.

If you're interested in learning how to setup a Python web app on Interserver, it is really easy using cPanel. Check out my tutorial Setup Python WSGI apps on cPanel (Flask/Django).

If you want to create a bootable SD card or USB flash drive using a disk image like a .iso or .img you have a few options.

• Use the dd command-line tool
• Use a GUI tool like BalenaEtcher

This is a common task when setting up an SD card for a Raspberry Pi or creating a USB flash drive with a Linux LiveCD distro. In this example we will review both the Etcher option and dd option.

For a long time only PHP applications were well supported in cPanel, but now Python, Ruby, and Node.js apps can be deployed easily. In this guide, I will walk through the steps and configuration needed to run a plain WSGI app, a Flask app, and a Django app. In my cPanel version, it says cPanel 11 (86.0.13).

In order to make an application cross-platform, there may be times when you want to inspect the operating system and take a different action depending on whether it is Linux, Mac, Windows, or other.

This guide will show you how to get information about the system including the operating system that is running.

Python has a built-in Sqlite3 module named sqlite3. This module allows you to create, connect, and modify SQLite 3 databases.

To learn more about SQLite3 and how to use it in general, check out my SQLite3 Tutorial and my other sqlite tutorials.

If you need a database-agnostic library, something that you can use with SQLite and then easily configure to start using MySQL without rewriting all of your code, you want to use an ORM. ORM stands for Object-Relational-Mapping and the most popular one for Python is SQLAlchemy and Django's ORM.

When you fork a process with os.fork(). Note this will not work with the latest versions of Python in Windows. You will want to use Python's multiprocessing library for that.

Python is a flexible programming language that gives you a lot of power in MacOS. We'll look at four methods of setting up Python on MacOS.

1. Using pre-packaged system Python
2. Using the official Python.org installer
3. Using Homebrew to install
4. Compiling Python from source

Introduction

If you have ever tried to connect to a server using TLS, you might have run in to an error like this saying the certificate is untrusted:

Introduction

Working with files and directories is a common task when developing in Python. Let's look at several useful tools and methods for working with files and directories.

If you work with files, you might also find my tutorial Working with Binary Data in Python useful.

Among the popular operating systems, they have all standardized on using standard input, standard output, and standard error with file desciptors 0, 1, and 2 respectively. This allows you to pipe the inputs and outputs to different locations. Let's look at how to utilize standard input, output, and error in Python.

To learn more about piping, redirection, stdin, stdout, and stderr in general, see my tutorial STDIN, STDOUT, STDERR, Piping, and Redirecting.