Files application architecture

[Gabriel Genellina]

En Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:53:12 -0300, Benjamin Watine <watine at cines.fr>  
escribió:

> I'm about to develop a small python application and I wonder how to  
> organize files in this application.
> I'm familar to java, so I'm tempted to use the same convention : 1 file  
> per class and 1 folders per package.

You don't *have* to artificially restrict yourself to one class per file.  
In Python it's common to place several related classes in the same module  
(i.e., file). You don't have to write so much boilerplate code as in Java,  
so classes tend to be smaller in size; you may even find classes with an  
empty body.

> I know that packages doesn't exists in python, they are modules instead.

Uh? Have you read the Python Tutorial?
http://docs.python.org/tut/node8.html#SECTION008400000000000000000

> So, what are best practices for organizing files and folders in a small  
> python project ?
> I've found PEP8 (http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0008/) that gives a  
> lot of good hints on coding convention, but nothing about files  
> organization.

A small application may consist of just a main entry point and some  
imported modules, all residing in the same directory. It might not require  
to define any package. Perhaps later, when some module grows too much, you  
may want to refactor it, creating a package. But try to keep simple things  
simple.

-- 
Gabriel Genellina