Jython Essentials (O'Reilly Scripting) (Paperback)

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Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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 also covers the various ways in which Jython can interact with Java classes and objects and provides numerous examples and valuable reference material for using Jython with existing Java libraries, including the Swing GUI toolkit, the JDBC database API, the Servlet API, and various XML tools.

About the Author

Pedroni is one of the main Jython developers; he has developed several important patches related to Java integration, class loaders, and Java/Python import rules.

Noel Rappin is the Director of Rails Practice at Pathfinder Associates ( www.pathfinderagile.com ), and has nearly a decade of experience with web application programming. Noel has a Ph.D. from the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he studied how to teach object - oriented design concepts. He is the co - author of "Jython Essentials" and "wxPython in Action." You can read more of Noel' s writing at both the Pathfinder Agile Ajax blog (http: //blogs.pathf.com/agileajax) and his own blog (http: //10printhello.blogspot.com).

Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (March 21, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596002475
• ISBN-13: 978-0596002473
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 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.com Sales Rank: #247,405 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

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

By	Joseph A Kauzlarich (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

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

By A Customer

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.

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

By	Easther Crescent - See all my reviews

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.