Automate the Boring Stuff with Python Workbook: Projects and Exercises to Sharpen Your Python Skills

Cover....1

Title page....5

About the Author....9

Brief Contents....11

Contents in Detail....13

Acknowledgments....21

Introduction....23

How to Use This Workbook....24

About the Activities....24

A Note for Instructors....26

How to Answer Your Own Questions....26

Continuing Your Programming Journey....27

Chapter 1: Python Basics....29

Practice Questions....30

Entering Expressions into the Interactive Shell....30

The Integer, Floating-Point, and String Data Types....31

String Concatenation and Replication....31

Storing Values in Variables....32

Your First Program....33

How Computers Store Data with Binary Numbers....34

Practice Projects....35

Rectangle Printer....35

Perimeter and Area Calculator....36

Chapter 2: if-else and Flow Control....37

Practice Questions....38

Boolean Values....38

Comparison Operators....38

Boolean Operators....39

Components of Flow Control....39

Flow Control Statements....40

Practice Projects....41

Fixing the Safe Temperature Program....41

Single-Expression Safe Temperature....42

Fizz Buzz....42

Chapter 3: Loops....45

Practice Questions....46

while Loop Statements....46

for Loops and the range() Function....47

Importing Modules....49

Ending a Program Early with sys.exit()....49

Practice Projects....50

Tree Printer....50

Christmas Tree Printer....51

Chapter 4: Functions....53

Practice Questions....54

Creating Functions....54

Arguments and Parameters....54

Return Values and return Statements....55

The None Value....56

The Call Stack....56

Local and Global Scopes....57

Exception Handling....58

Practice Projects....58

Transaction Tracker....58

Arithmetic Functions Without Arithmetic Operators....59

Tick Tock....60

Chapter 5: Debugging....61

Practice Questions....62

Raising Exceptions....62

Assertions....62

Logging....63

Mu’s Debugger....63

Practice Projects....64

Buggy Grade-Average Calculator....64

Zero Division Error....65

Leap Year Calculator....65

Writing Buggy Code on Purpose....66

Chapter 6: Lists....67

Practice Questions....68

The List Data Type....68

Working with Lists....68

Augmented Assignment Operators....69

Methods....70

Short-Circuiting Boolean Operators....71

Sequence Data Types....71

References....72

Practice Projects....72

Pangram Detector....72

Coordinate Directions....73

Chapter 7: Dictionaries and Structuring Data....75

Practice Questions....76

The Dictionary Data Type....76

Model Real-World Things Using Data Structures....77

Nested Dictionaries and Lists....78

Practice Projects....79

Random Weather Data Generator....79

Average-Temperature Analyzer....79

Chess Rook Capture Predictor....80

Chapter 8: Strings and Text Editing....81

Practice Questions....82

Working with Strings....82

F-Strings....83

Useful String Methods....83

Numeric Code Points of Characters....84

Copying and Pasting Strings....84

Practice Projects....85

Word Match Game....85

Diagonal Stripe Scroll Animation....86

mOcKiNg SpOnGeBoB mEmE....87

Chapter 9: Text Pattern Matching with Regular Expressions....89

Practice Questions....90

The Syntax of Regular Expressions....90

Qualifier Syntax: What Characters to Match....91

Quantifier Syntax: How Many Qualifiers to Match....91

Greedy and Non-Greedy Matching....92

Matching at the Start and End of a String....92

Case-Insensitive Matching....92

Substituting Strings....93

Managing Complex Regexes with Verbose Mode....93

Humre: A Module for Human-Readable Regexes....93

Practice Projects....94

Hashtag-Finding Regex....94

Price-Finding Regex....94

Creating a CSV File of PyCon Speakers....94

Laugh Score....95

Word Twister—ordW wisterT....96

Chapter 10: Reading and Writing Files....97

Practice Questions....98

Files and Filepaths....98

The File Reading and Writing Process....99

Saving Variables with the shelve Module....100

Practice Projects....100

Text File Combiner....100

Zigzag File....100

Rock, Paper, Scissors with Saved Games....101

Chapter 11: Organizing Files....103

Practice Questions....104

The shutil Module....104

Walking a Directory Tree....104

Compressing Files with the zipfile Module....105

Practice Projects....106

Duplicate Filename Finder....106

Alphabetized Folders....106

ZIP File Folder Extractor....107

Chapter 12: Designing and Deploying Command Line Programs....109

Practice Questions....110

A Program by Any Other Name....110

Using the Terminal....110

Virtual Environments....111

Installing Python Packages with pip....112

Self-Aware Python Programs....112

Text-Based Program Design....112

Pop-Up Message Boxes with PyMsgBox....113

Deploying Python Programs....114

Compiling Python Programs with PyInstaller....114

Practice Projects....115

Guess the Number with PyMsgBox....115

Timer with PyMsgBox....115

Compiling the Timer and Guess the Number Programs....115

Chapter 13: Web Scraping....117

Practice Questions....118

HTTP and HTTPS....118

Downloading Files from the Web and with the requests Module....118

Accessing a Weather API....119

Understanding HTML....119

Parsing HTML with Beautiful Soup....120

Controlling the Browser with Selenium....120

Controlling the Browser with Playwright....121

Practice Projects....122

Headline Downloader....122

Image Downloader....123

Breadcrumb Follower....123

HTML Chessboard....123

Chapter 14: Excel Spreadsheets....127

Practice Questions....128

Reading Excel Files....128

Writing Excel Documents....128

Setting the Font Style of Cells....129

Formulas....130

Adjusting Rows and Columns....130

Charts....131

Practice Projects....131

Search Term Finder....131

Excel Home Folder Report....131

Chapter 15: Google Sheets....133

Practice Questions....134

Installing and Setting Up EZSheets....134

Spreadsheet Objects....134

Sheet Objects....135

Google Forms....136

Working with Google Sheets Quotas....136

Practice Projects....136

Uploading All Files in a Folder....136

Google Sheets Home Folder Report....137

Chapter 16: SQLite Databases....139

Practice Questions....140

Spreadsheets vs. Databases....140

SQLite vs. Other SQL Databases....140

Creating Databases and Tables....141

CRUD Database Operations....141

Rolling Back Transactions....143

Backing Up Databases....143

Altering and Dropping Tables....143

Joining Multiple Tables with Foreign Keys....144

In-Memory Databases and Backups....144

Practice Projects....145

Monitoring Free Disk Space Levels....145

Database-to-String Converter....146

Chapter 17: PDF and Word Documents....147

Practice Questions....148

PDF Documents....148

Word Documents....149

Practice Projects....150

PDF Document Word Counter....150

Searching All PDFs in a Folder....150

Word Document Logger for Guess the Number....150

Converting Text Files to Word Documents....151

Bolding Words in a Word Document....151

Chapter 18: CSV, JSON, and XML Files....153

Practice Questions....154

The CSV Format....154

Versatile Plaintext Formats....155

Practice Projects....156

Fizz Buzz (CSV)....156

Guess the Number Statistics (CSV)....157

Guess the Number Statistics (JSON)....158

Guess the Number Statistics (XML)....158

Chapter 19: Keeping Time, Scheduling Tasks, and Launching Programs....159

Practice Questions....160

The time Module....160

The datetime Module....160

Launching Other Programs from Python....161

Practice Projects....162

Alarm with Sound....162

Image Opener....163

“Next Holiday” Reporter....163

Chapter 20: Sending Email, Texts, and Push Notifications....165

Practice Questions....166

The Gmail API....166

SMS Email Gateways....166

Push Notifications....167

Practice Projects....168

“Quote of the Day” Email....168

“Quote of the Day” Push Notification....168

Chapter 21: Making Graphs and Manipulating Images....169

Practice Questions....170

Computer Image Fundamentals....170

Manipulating Images with Pillow....170

Drawing on Images....172

Copying and Pasting Images to the Clipboard....173

Creating Graphs with Matplotlib....173

Practice Projects....174

Snowpal Image....174

Rainbow Flag Image Generator....174

Clipboard Image Recorder....175

Chapter 22: Recognizing Text in Images....177

Practice Questions....178

Installing Tesseract and PyTesseract....178

OCR Fundamentals....178

Recognizing Text in Non-English Languages....179

The NAPS2 Scanner Application....179

Practice Projects....180

Searchable Web Comics....180

Enhancing Text in Web Comics....180

Chapter 23: Controlling the Keyboard and Mouse....181

Practice Questions....182

Staying on Track....182

Controlling Mouse Movement....182

Controlling Mouse Interaction....183

Planning Your Mouse Movements....184

Taking Screenshots....184

Image Recognition....184

Getting Window Information....185

Controlling the Keyboard....186

Practice Projects....186

Jackson Pollock Bot....186

Mouse Movement Recorder....187

Mouse Movement Playback....188

Chapter 24: Text-to-Speech and Speech Recognition Engines....189

Practice Questions....190

Text-to-Speech Engine....190

Speech Recognition....190

Creating Subtitle Files....191

Downloading Videos from Websites....192

Practice Projects....192

Knock-Knock Jokes....192

12 Days of Christmas....192

Podcast Word Search....193

Answers....195

Back cover....291

You've seen what Python can do. Now go deeper.

This workbook transforms Al Sweigart’s best-selling guide from a reading experience into a coding experience. Following Automate the Boring Stuff with Python chapter by chapter, this workbook will help you turn concepts into muscle memory through carefully designed exercises, projects, and real Python scripts.

Every concept from Automate is reinforced through carefully sequenced questions, exercises, and projects that help you think like a programmer and prove to yourself that you really get it.

At the end of each chapter, you’ll tackle miniprojects that bring everything together. Whether you’re renaming files, scraping websites, converting text to speech, modifying spreadsheets, or sending emails, you’ll build scripts that do real work. Fun projects like image generators and word games are in the mix too, not just boring stuff.

Every question and project come with a solution at the back of the book, so you’re never stuck.

Inside, you’ll find:

• Fill-in-the-blank and short-answer questions that reinforce key concepts
• Targeted exercises to build fluency with variables, loops, functions, regular expressions, and more
• Real Python scripts to run, tweak, and debug
• Projects that automate common tasks like organizing files, backing up data, and scheduling programs
• Full working code for every project so you can check your work and learn by example

With over 500,000 copies sold worldwide, Automate the Boring Stuff with Python has become the go-to guide for learning Python. This workbook gives you the structure, feedback, and smart reinforcement to go from reading code to writing it with confidence.