3.0.0 - Overhauled net module, new object cleaner for easier serialisation, improved class generation/mocking + more

Key Additions and Changes

• privex.helpers.common

  • Added strip_null - very simple helper function to strip both \00 and white space
    from a string - with 2 cycles for good measure.

• privex.helpers.types

  • Added AUTO / AUTOMATIC / AUTO_DETECTED dummy type, for use as the default value
    of function/method parameters, signalling to users that a parameter is auto-populated
    from another data source (e.g. instance/class attribute) if not specified.

• privex.helpers.collections

  • Added copy_class_simple (alternative to copy_class)
  • Added copy_func for copying functions, methods, and classmethods
  • Improved _q_copy to handle copying functions, methods and classmethods
  • Added generate_class + generate_class_kw
  • Added Mocker.make_mock_module
  • Added Mocker.add_mock_modules
  • Added Mocker.__dir__ to track the available mock attributes and modules
  • Added dataclasses_mock - a Mocker instance which emulates dataclasses as a drop-in
    partially functional dummy for Python 3.6 when the dataclasses backport package isn't installed.
  • Various changes to Mocker.make_mock_class - potentially breaking, see the BREAKING CHANGES section.
  • Added DictObject.__dir__ + OrderedDictObject.__dir__ to enable proper tracking of dictionary keys as attributes

• privex.helpers.net

  • This module has now been converted into a folder-based module. Imports in __init__.py have been carefully setup to ensure that existing import statements should still work as normal

  • Added new SocketWrapper and AsyncSocketWrapper classes, which are powerful wrapper classes for working with Python socket.socket objects, including support for SSL/TLS, partial support for running socket servers, and making basic HTTP requests

  • Many, many new functions and classes! There's too many to list, and due to the conversion into a module folder instead of a singular file, it's difficult to track which functions/classes are new, and which existed before.

    If you really want to know what's new, just take a look around the privex/helpers/net module.

• privex.helpers.converters

  • Added clean_obj - which is a function that recursively "cleans" any arbitrary object, as to make it safe to convert into JSON and other common serialisation formats. It supports dict's, list's, attrs objects, native Python dataclass's, Decimal, and many other types of objects.
  • Added clean_dict (used by clean_obj, usually no need to call it directly)
  • Added clean_list (used by clean_obj, usually no need to call it directly)

• Added privex.helpers.mockers module, which contains pre-made Mocker objects that are designed to stand-in for certain libraries / classes as partially functional dummies, if the real module(s) are unavailable for whatever reason.

• And probably some other small additions / changes

BREAKING CHANGES

• Both _copy_class_dict and _copy_class_slotted now check each attribute name against a blacklist (default: COPY_CLASS_BLACKLIST), and the default blacklist contains __dict__, __slots__ and __weakref__, as the first 2 can't be directly copied (but we copy their contents by iteration), and weakref simply can't be deep copied (and it probably isn't a good idea to copy it anyway).

• _copy_class_dict (used by copy_class) no longer breaks the attribute copy loop if deep_copy=False

• Mocker.make_mock_class now returns a cloned Mocker class or instance by default, instead of a barebones class / instance of a barebones class.

  This was done simply because a Mocker class/instance is designed to handle being instantiated with any combination of constructor arguments, and have arbitrary attributes be retrieved / methods called without raising errors.

  If you absolutely require a plain, simple, empty class to be generated, you may pass the parameter simple=True to generate a bare class instead of a clone of Mocker (similar to the old behaviour). Unlike the old version of this method, you can now specify attributes as a dictionary to make your barebones mock class act similar to the class it's mocking.

• Many things in privex.helpers.net such as check_host / check_host_async have been improved in various ways, however
  there may be some breaking changes with certain privex.helpers.net functions/classes in certain usecases.

  • Due to the high risk of bugs with certain networking functions that have been completely revamped, the older, simpler versions of various networking functions are available under privex.helpers.net.base with their original names.

    Because of the naming conflicts, to use the legacy functions/classes from base, you must import them directly from privex.helpers.net.base like so:

    # Option 1: import the base module itself, with an alias to prevent naming conflicts (and make it more
    # clear what you're referencing)
    from privex.helpers.net import base as netbase
    if netbase.check_host('google.com', 80):
        print('google.com is up')
    # Option 2: import the required legacy functions directly (optionally, you can alias them as needed)
    # You could also alias the newer overhauled functions while testing them in small portions
    # of your application.
    from privex.helpers.net.base import check_host
    from privex.helpers.net import check_host as new_check_host
    
    if check_host('www.privex.io', 443, http_test=True, use_ssl=True):
        print('[old check_host] https://www.privex.io is up')
    if new_check_host('files.privex.io', 443, http_test=True, use_ssl=True):
        print('[new check_host] https://files.privex.io is up')