Adding help and parameters to your Python Program
In this chapter, we have taken a single Python program and given it the ability to:
Scan logs to count the number of measurements and RPZ restarts
Manipulate log strings to summarize RPZ temperature data
Plot a graph of a range of RPZ temperature readings
E-mail someone a graph of RPZ temperature readings
Generate a CSV file of date/temperature readings
Push date/temperature readings to Google spreadsheets
Up until now, I have just been adding functions to the main function and executing everything or commenting out the functions I don't want to execute for that recipe. With a little code polishing, this little collection of functions can be turned into a more useful utility, giving the user a choice of which functions will actually execute, and providing information on what each function will do. Python makes it very easy to add user interactivity, so we can create just the CSV, or we can provide the summary and display a graph--or even do everything...
