Event-Driven Programming

In this chapter, I'm going to introduce you to the wonderful art of event-driven programming. Event-driven programming is a paradigm that focuses on events. While this may be somewhat obvious, what isn't all that obvious is the definition of an "event" in the programming sense and what entirely this encapsulates.

We'll first look at what event-driven programming is in a general sense, and then, we'll introduce the asyncio module, which is predominately used for all types of event-driven Python applications.

This chapter also looks to give you an introduction to the world of asyncio programming. This could, in theory, have it's own book written about it. I'll attempt to demystify some of the more critical sections and provide some small examples of how you can utilize them within your own programs.

All in all, we'll be covering the following topics in this chapter:

• Event-driven programming--what is it and how does it work?
• The asyncio module in depth
• Debugging asyncio-based programs
• The Twisted event-driven networking engine
• Gevent

This should be enough to get you up and running to create your own event-driven systems in Python.