1.14. Summary

The odbchelper.py program and its output should now make perfect sense.

Example 1.35. odbchelper.py

def buildConnectionString(params):
    """Build a connection string from a dictionary of parameters.

    Returns string."""
    return ";".join(["%s=%s" % (k, params[k]) for k in params.keys()])

if __name__ == "__main__":
    myParams = {"server":"mpilgrim", \
                "database":"master", \
                "uid":"sa", \
                "pwd":"secret" \
                }
    print buildConnectionString(myParams)

Example 1.36. Output of odbchelper.py

server=mpilgrim;uid=sa;database=master;pwd=secret

Before diving into the next chapter, make sure you're comfortable doing all of these things:

• Using the Python IDE to test expressions interactively
• Writing Python modules so they can also be run as standalone programs, at least for testing purposes
• Importing modules and calling their functions
• Declaring functions and using doc strings, local variables, and proper indentation
• Defining dictionaries, tuples, and lists
• Accessing attributes and methods of any object, including strings, lists, dictionaries, functions, and modules
• Concatenating values through string formatting
• Mapping lists into other lists
• Splitting strings into lists and joining lists into strings