The Utils Package (tendril.utils)¶

The utils package contains various Utils modules which provide functionality that is either :

• Logically independent of the main Tendril functionality.
• Used by multiple Tendril’s packages, either due to generic nature of the functionality, or because it defines the structure that functionality should take within Tendril.

These modules typically expose specific functionality of third-party or built-in Python modules and simplify access by restricting the ways in which these modules can be used. For instance, various options are preselected within the Utils module, meaning application code does not have to bother about it. This comes at the cost of reducing the flexibility available when using this functionality in application code.

The intent of the tendril.utils package and it’s modules is to attempt to create a consistent structure throughout the tendril codebase. The tendril.utils module, in effect, specifies the preferred way to do certain common things. Tendril application code which makes use of the functionality of this module is expected to benefit in the form of consistency, relative ease in honoring user-provided parameters (across the codebase), and not need to deal with the underlying libraries and the wide range of usage options available for the most common cases.

It is expected that this structure will be critical to being able to easily adapt the Tendril codebase to new environments and for making more flexibility accessible to administrators of Tendril instances.

Many of the modules provided here can be re-implemented to use different underlying implementations, while preserving the interface they present to Tendril application code.

The Utility Modules