Coding Standards

Basics

• We’re basing our coding style on Google’s Python style guide. If in doubt, use this. The PEP8 guide is also good.
• We’re releasing code under the GPL3 license.

Languages and modules

• Use Python version 2.7 with and Django 1.3.
• The final version will be released as part of the Global Pulse platform toolkit, running on a hosted server.
• We’re building at Global Pulse using a sqlite database built into python/Django which doesn't require additional downloads to use for developing on separate machines.

Testing

• Basic bug checks: run pychecker over your code.
• We're great fans of Test Driven Development: we want to use Nose and Freshen on this project.

Style Rules

General

• First line of each .py file (except init.py) is #!/usr/bin/python2.6
• One command per line – don’t separate a line with semicolons

Formatting

• Indentation: use 2 spaces per indentation level. Do not use tabs.
• Line length: maximum of 80 characters per line.

Comments

• Comments: yes please.

• File headers: every .py file will have a header (at the top of the file), containing:

  # Author name
  # Date file created in YYYY-MM-DD format
  # GPL3 license boilerplate

• TODO comments: should be written as # TODO(Name:YYYY-MM-DD) which would look like

  # TODO(Texas:2011-06-15) Comment text here

• Every function will have a comment above it that includes: a doc string (“””), author, description of what the function does, what its inputs and outputs are, and the exceptions that it raises

  # Author: First_Name
  # Description: This method takes the file inputs from the sign in page and saves them to the database
  # Inputs: firstName(string), lastName(string), age(int)
  # Outputs: dbSaveSuccess(boolean)
  # Exceptions: variableLengthException( the variable you are inputting is longer then the maximum length allowed by the # field # in the DB )

• Every class will have a comment above it with a description of what the class will do.

  # This class imports created a Linked In API object from the username and password it is provided.

Names

• Class Names:** ClassName
• Class variable names:** first_name
• Methods:** get_first_name
• Constants:** CONSTANT_NAME

Language Rules

See the Google Python style guide (link at top of this page).