Coding Guidelines and Standards

These are some basic coding standards that programmers should follow when contributing to Chiplotle:

Indent with spaces, not with tabs. Use three spaces at a time:

def foo(x, y):
   return x + y

Introduce comments with two pound signs and a single space:

## comment before foo
def foo(x, y):
   return x + y

Limit lines to 80 characters and use \ to break lines where necessary.

Favor early imports at the head of each module. Only one import per line:

from foo import x
from foo import y
from foo import z

Include two blank lines after import statements before the rest of the module:

from foo import x
from foo import y
from foo import z


class Foo(object):
   ...
   ...

Always write an informative docstring when defining a new function or class:

def foo(x, y):
   '''This is an informative docstring.'''

Use paired apostrophes to delimit strings:

s = 'foo'

Use paired quotation marks to delimit strings within a string:

s = 'foo and "bar"'

Eliminate trivial slice indices. Use s[:4] instead of s[0:4].

Name classes in upper camelcase:

def FooBar(object):
   ...
   ...

Name bound methods in underscore-delimited lowercase:

def Foo(object):

   def bar_blah(self):
      ...

   def bar_baz(self):
      ...

Name module-level functions in underscore-delimited lowercase:

def foo_bar( ):
   ...

def foo_blah( ):
   ...

Organize the definitions of core classes into the five following major sections plus initialization:

class FooBar(object):

   def __init__(self, x, y):
      ...

   ## OVERLOADS ##

   def __repr__(self):
      ...

   def __str__(self):
      ...

   ## PRIVATE ATTRIBUTES ##

   @property
   def _foo(self):
      ...

   ## PUBLIC ATTRIBUTES ##

   @property
   def bar(self):
      ...

   ## PRIVATE METHODS ##

   def _blah(self, x, y):
      ...

   ## PUBLIC METHODS ##

   def baz(self, z):
      ...

Precede private class attributes with a single underscore:

class FooBar(object):

   ## PRIVATE ATTRIBUTES ##

   @property
   def _foo(self):
      ...

   ## PRIVATE METHODS ##

   def _blah(self, x, y):
      ...

Include a single space in between empty parentheses:

def foo( ):
   ...
   ...

Separate binary operators with space:

(a // b) + c == d

not:

(a//b)+c==d

Do not abbreviate variable names.

Name variables that represent a list or other collection of objects in the plural.

Author one py.test test file for every module-level function.

Author one py.test test file for every bound method in the public interface of a class.