Python

Intelligent Investor is a classic investment book written by Benjamin Graham, often considered the father of value investing. Originally published in 1949, the book offers timeless principles for sound investing. It is one of my most favorite finance books and to summarize key points deserves a single post in itself. Python (or programming in general) is very popular in the financial industry. I really like to work on my programming skills on a real-world projects, hence I have built a small script that analyzes stocks based on Benjamin Graham’s criteria (but I also added some other small criterias) for finding undervalued stocks. ...

I want to learn Python deeply. Because I like to combine learning materials and I also like to learn from books, I have bought a book considered “a bible of Python” - Fluent Python. It contains almost 1000 pages and has really good reviews. I will use it not only as a reference when I need to look something up, but I will slowly go through it topic-by-topic in order to learn as much about the language as possible. ...

Learning anything deeply requires a lot of time and it is an on-going process. Programming is no different. Challenging part is that, it seems like, there is always more and more to learn. For example, learning Python - you can go through basics in 1 hour, but when you start exploring it more and actually start using the language, you always find something new. A new feature, library, module, tool, n different ways of doing a task. ...

One of key features of PyTest is the ability to create parametrized tests, meaning running test cases with various input values without having to write separate test cases. Main goal of my most recent Django project is to develop better understanding of testing principles and tools. I have already built few Django applications, however never really focused on testing my own code - I was just happy the app “worked”. Knowing what and how to test is a skill in itself. It is quite a challenge. One can write hundreds of test cases which are not really covering the essential functionalities, or they repeat. Just as most of the things, it comes with a practice. However, I understand the long-term value of writing and having effective tests. ...

As I’m currently using and learning PyTest framework in my QA Automation project, I have noticed that a lot of functions decorated with @pytest.fixture() decorator use the yield keyword instead of the return keyword. I was not sure about the exact difference between these two statements, therefore I have decided to research it a bit more. return vs yield statement Both yield and return are keywords in Python and both are used in a function to pass values from one function to another in a program. ...

To improve my automation skills, I am working on a QA Automation project where I have to solve various Test Cases that test many aspects of the web-application. I have started this project with the main goal of developing better understanding of Page Object Model, Selenium and PyTest. For the bigger projects it is very important to correctly design and structure the project itself. Very popular design pattern for this purpose is called Page Object Model. This way, I would like to sum-up some of the things I have learned about POM so far. ...

I have just completed a fun exercise on HackerRank named Company Logo. The task was to “print the three most common characters along with their occurrence count”. Task Two key conditions were: Sort in descending order of occurrence count, If the occurrence count is the same, sort the characters in alphabetical order. As with most of the problems, there is more than one solution, but because I recently explored the collections module and DefaultDict in particular, it was the first thing that came to my mind - I would insert each character into the dictionary and on each occurence increment the value by 1. ...

I’m currently going over Python’s collection module exercises on HackerRank. This module offers a range of data-structures and algorithms that can enhance the performance and functionality of your Python programs. What I’ve learned so far is that when I am in need of some specialized data-structure, I should take a look into collections module. Python’s collection module offers: Counter The Counter class within the collections module provides an efficient way to count the occurrence of elements in a collection. It takes an iterable as input and returns a dictionary-like object where elements are keys and their counts are the corresponding values. ...

[TOC] Web element interactions are at the core of web automation using Selenium and Python. By leveraging the various locator strategies available, you can precisely locate and interact with web elements. Modern websites can be very complex and unique, therefore learning different locators can be a great investment. Benefits of knowing various locator strategies: Precise Element Identification: Locators allow you to target specific elements on a web page accurately. Flexibility and Adaptability: Locators provide flexibility in locating elements by offering different strategies such as ID, class name, tag name, etc. Maintainability and Robustness: Locators help in creating maintainable and robust automation scripts. Reusability: Once you define a locator for an element, you can reuse it across multiple test cases or scenarios. Improved Readability: Locators make your automation scripts more readable and understandable. Enhanced Debugging and Troubleshooting: When an automation script encounters an issue, having well-defined locators makes debugging and troubleshooting more manageable. Cross-Browser and Platform Compatibility: Locators help ensure cross-browser and platform compatibility. Reduced Maintenance Effort: With reliable locators, your automation scripts require fewer updates and maintenance efforts. Locator strategies As mentioned before, Selenium comes with many locators, such as: ...

One essential aspect of Selenium is handling synchronization issues (for example, AJAX loading screen), where the automation script needs to wait for specific conditions to be met before proceeding. This is where “Expected Conditions” come into play, providing a flexible and efficient way to wait for elements or certain states to appear or change on a web page. What are Expected Conditions? Expected Conditions are predefined conditions that Selenium can wait for, ensuring that the desired state or element is available before performing an action or assertion. These conditions are part of the selenium.webdriver.support.expected_conditions module and can be used in conjunction with the WebDriverWait class to implement effective synchronization in your automation scripts. ...