Coding Style Guidelines

To follow this style guide is no duty for any plugin developer. It’s mainly a description of how I (Bitmonster) write code for the project.

General

If not otherwise state here, PEP 8 and PEP 257 should be followed.

Indentation

Four spaces and definitely no tabs.

Maximum Line Length

Maximum line length of 79 characters. Longer lines should be wrapped by surrounding expressions in parentheses rather than using \. If you break up parentheses, let every parameter be on a line of its own indented by one level. The closing bracket should also be on a line of its own but with the same indentation as the line with the opening bracket. If additional parentheses are inside this construct, break them in the same way, if they would otherwise be longer than the maximum line length. An example:

def MyMethodWithManyParameters(
    self,
    parameter1,
    parameter2,
    parameter3,
    parameter4,
    parameter5
):
    if (
        parameter1 is None
        and parameter2 is not None
        and (
            parameter3 == parameter4
            or parameter3 == parameter5
        )
    ):
        DoMyFunctionWithManyParameters(
            parameter1,
            DoAnotherFunction(
                parameter2,
                parameter3,
                parameter4
            ),
            ShortFunc(parameter2, parameter5),
            parameter5
        )

Even though this looks wasteful and odd in the beginning, it is easier to understand as this example with the same content:

def MyMethodWithManyParameters(self, parameter1, parameter2,  parameter3,
                                                    parameter4, parameter5):
    if parameter1 is None and parameter2 is not None and \
                    (parameter3 == parameter4 or parameter3 == parameter5)):
        DoMyFunctionWithManyParameters(parameter1, DoAnotherFunction(
                parameter2, parameter3, parameter4), ShortFunc(parameter2,
                                                    parameter5), parameter5)

Blank Lines

Put two blank lines between function and method definitions. Three lines between class definitions. Inside functions or methods never use more than one consecutive blank line.

Naming Conventions

Since EventGhost relies heavily on wxPython, it uses naming conventions, that are not so common in the Python world. But actually they are also quite similar to the ones used by the Microsoft Windows-API.

Classes, Methods, Functions

For all of these MixedCase is used (upper-case letter to start with, words run together, each starting with an upper-case letter).

Class Attributes, Function Parameters, Local Variables

For all of these mixedCaseExceptFirstWord is used (lower-case letter to start with, words run together, each starting with an upper-case letter).

Constants

ALL_CAPS_WITH_UNDERSCORES is used.