Jython Essentials (O'Reilly Scripting) [Paperback]

Samuele Pedroni (Author), Noel Rappin (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0596002475 | ISBN-13: 978-0596002473 | Publication Date: March 28, 2002 | Edition: 1

Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language written in 100% pure Java, so it runs under any compliant Java Virtual Machine. The secret to Jython's popularity lies in the combination of Java's libraries and tools with Python's rapid development capabilities. With Jython, you can write Python programs that integrate seamlessly with any Java code. And like Python, Jython can be used interactively, so you can get immediate results as you are programming.

Jython Essentials provides a solid introduction to the Python language, offering a brief but thorough tour of the Python concepts you'll need to understand to use Jython effectively. The book makes frequent comparisons between Python and Java, with special emphasis on the different object-oriented semantics of the two languages, so Java programmers can quickly get up to speed with Jython.

Jython Essentials also covers the various ways in which Jython and Java can interact. For example, Jython code can create instances of pre-existing Java classes and call methods in those instances. You can write Jython classes that are direct subclasses of existing Java classes and use introspection to discern the capabilities of JavaBeans components. This book provides examples of using Jython with existing Java libraries, including the Swing GUI toolkit, the JDBC database API, the Servlet API, and various XML tools. And finally, the book shows how Jython can be used as a scripting language within a Java program.

With Jython Essentials, you have everything you need to start creating applications that mix the best of Python's interactivity and Java's robust libraries.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Samuele Pedroni is one of the main Jython developers. He holds a CS flavored diploma in mathematics from the ETH Zurich (Swiss institute of technology in Zurich). He is now a teacher and research assistant at the Institute of Theoretical CS. He plans to come to the US for a PhD in the field of dynamic languages and dynamic compilation. He came to Jython with the interest in improving it with respect to Java importing and reloading. He has developed several important patches related to java integration, classloaders, and the reworking of java/python importing rules and design.

Noel Rappin has a Ph.D. in computer science from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where his research included methods for teaching Object-Oriented Programming and Design. He has extensive production experience in both Java and Python. Noel also contributed an introductory chapter to the book Squeak: Open Personal Computing and Multimedia (PH).

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (March 28, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002475
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002473
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #419,312 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Informative, but poorly presented, March 14, 2003

By 

The Last Person You'd Expect (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Jython Essentials (O'Reilly Scripting) (Paperback)

I found the book to be informative in learning JPython, but it seemed to have ignored the most practical use-cases for JPython, light scripting and unit testing, and kept suggesting JPython as an alternative for working in Java. In addition, I felt the book was poorly (or boringly) written and that the authors failed to draw on any significant amount of experience in writing the book.

I would have preferred a book that wrote of JPython as a scripting language for Java and that offered advice on how best to leverage JPython for this purpose. I recommend taking a hard look at the other titles before purchasing this one.

OK, I'm adding a paragraph to this review after owning the book for a few weeks. It IS a very helpful book and I'm raising my rating from 2 to 4 stars. Perhaps I was thrown off at first by the succinctness of the text, but I've come to find that it makes it a great reference book. I'm already a half-way experienced programmer and do not need the filler and the explanation of concepts that thicker books probably provide.

Also, there is a helpful section on unit testing which I'd missed (It wasn't placed very well in the book) and python is a flexible enough language that someone should be able to figure out different ways to unit test without the section.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Helpful, but poor explanations, March 15, 2009

By 

Easther Crescent - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jython Essentials (O'Reilly Scripting) (Paperback)

The book is definitely helpful in understanding how Jython works, but the explanations should be made in a much more user-friendly way with more examples. Often I found myself left in the fog. The book sometimes assumes things without explaining. For instance, for simple functions like the following (p. 113):

>> import jarray
>> jarray.array(['crystal', 'ball'],java.lang.String)

you need to import java.lang.String before calling it. I didn't know that but the book doesn't explain that.

Also the book doesn't make clear that to import some java classes you have to include .jar file in the sys.path. It does mention .jar files but should make clear and emphasize that you must include it as a necessary step and also show how to do that. It took me a lot of agonizing and asking around to finally figure these out.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good language coverage, but awkward., December 9, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: Jython Essentials (O'Reilly Scripting) (Paperback)

This text has good coverage of the language features, but the presentation and organization is poor. If you're a Java developer looking to pick up jython quickly, I'd suggest "Jython for Java Programmers" instead.