Coding Standards

Portal Coding Standards

Having python as then major development language, the following are the coding practices and standards which are being used in the project.

Style Guide for Python

The PEP8 style guidelines

• The documentation gives coding conventions for the Python code comprising the standard library in the main Python distribution. Please see the companion informational PEP describing style guidelines for the C code in the C implementation of Python.
• This style guide evolves over time as additional conventions are identified and past conventions are rendered obsolete by changes in the language itself.

Docstrings

Docstrings are used to make the code more understandable for contributors. PEP 257 Docstring Convention is being used as a docstring style guide.

Testing

• Django unit tests are written to test the backend.
• Coverage reports are collected by coveralls
• Django-selenium tests are written for Web Driver Testing.

Django-nose is used which helps in:

• Testing just your apps by default, not all the standard ones that happen to be in INSTALLED_APPS
• Running the tests in one or more specific modules (or apps, or classes, or folders, or just running a specific test)
• Obviating the need to import all your tests into tests/init.py. This not only saves busy-work but also eliminates the possibility of accidentally shadowing test classes.
• Taking advantage of all the useful nose plugins
• Fixture bundling, an optional feature which speeds up your fixture-based tests by a factor of 4
• Reuse of previously created test DBs, cutting 10 seconds off startup time
• Hygienic TransactionTestCases, which can save you a DB flush per test
• Support for various databases. Tested with MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQLite. Others should work as well.

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Particulars to be careful about