Python - Exception Exercises

Exception Exercises
	Chapter 17. Exceptions

Exception Exercises

Input Helpers. There are a number of common character-mode input operations that can benefit from using exceptions to simplify error handling. All of these input operations are based around a loop that examines the results of raw_input and converts this to expected Python data.

All of these functions should accept a prompt, a default value and a help text. Some of these have additional parameters to qualify the list of valid responses.

All of these functions construct a prompt of the form:
```
your prompt
 [
valid input hints
,?,q]:
```
If the user enters a ?, the help text is displayed. If the user enters a q, an exception is raised that indicates that the user quit. Similarly, if the KeyboardInterrupt or any end-of-file exception is received, a user quit exception is raised from the exception handler.

Most of these functions have a similar algorithm.
Procedure 17.1. User Input Function
1. Construct Prompt. Construct the prompt with the hints for valid values, plus ? and q.
2. While Not Valid Input. Loop until the user enters valid input.
  
  Try the following suite of operations.
  1. Prompt and Read. Use raw_input to prompt and read a reply from the user.
  2. Help? If the user entered "?", provide the help message.
  3. Quit? If the user entered "q" or "Q", raise a UserQuit exception.
  4. Try the following suite of operations
    1. Convert. Attempt any conversion.
    2. Range Check. If necessary, do any range checks. For some prompts, there will be a fixed list of valid answers. For other prompts, there is no checking required.
      
      If the input is valid, break out of the loop.
    In the event of an exception, the user input was invalid.
  5. Nothing? If the user entered nothing, and there is a default value, return the default value.
  In the event of an exception, this function should generally raise a UserQuit exception.
3. Result. Return the validated user input.
ckdate

Prompts for and validates a date. The basic version would require dates have a specific format, for example mm/dd/yy. A more advanced version would accept a string to specify the format for the input. Much of this date validation is available in the time module, which will be covered in Chapter 32, Dates and Times: the time and datetime Modules . This function not reaturn bad dates or other invalid input.

ckint

Display a prompt; verify and return an integer value

ckitem

Build a menu; prompt for and return a menu item. A menu is a numbered list of alternative values, the user selects a value by entering the number. The function should accept a sequence of valid values, generate the numbers and return the actual menu item string. An additional help prompt of "??" should be accepted, this writes the help message and redisplays the menu.

ckkeywd

Prompts for and validates a keyword from a list of keywords. This is similar to the menu, but the prompt is simply the list of keywords without numbers being added.

ckpath

Display a prompt; verify and return a pathname. This can use the os.path module for information on construction of valid paths. This should use fstat to check the user input to confirm that it actually exists.

ckrange

Prompts for and validates an integer in a given range. The range is given as separate values for the lowest allowed and highest allowed value. If either is not given, then that limit doesn't apply. For instance, if only a lowest value is given, the valid input is greater than or equal to the lowest value. If only a highest value is given, the input must be less than or equal to the highest value.

ckstr

Display a prompt; verify and return a string answer. This is similar to the basic raw_input, except that it provides a simple help feature and raises exceptions when the user wants to quit.

cktime

Display a prompt; verify and return a time of day. This is similar to ckdate; a more advanced version would use the time module to validate inputs. The basic version can simply accept a hh : mm : ss time string and validate it as a legal time.

ckyorn

Prompts for and validates yes/no. This is similar to ckkeywd, except that it tolerates a number of variations on yes (YES, y, Y) and a number of variations on no (NO, n, N). It returns the canonical forms: Y or N irrespective of the input actually given.


Built-in Exceptions		Style Notes