calpack 2018.5.1

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CalPack
=======

Packets in Python Simplified.

This python package is everything you need to "transmorgrify" your
packets:

|Calvin and Hobbes Strip|

This package is intended to make creating and/or parsing packets
(structured bytecode) on the fly quick and easy. This is a wrapper
around the ```ctypes``
module <https://docs.python.org/dev/library/ctypes.html>`__ built-in to
python. This package is designed with influence from Django's modeling
and will look familiar to those that have used it.

A quick explanation of Packets and how to use them
--------------------------------------------------

Packets are structured bytecode used for passing information from one
place to another. The most common example is that of a TCP/IP Packet,
but isn't necessarily limited to networking packets. Here's a quick
example. Let's say we want to make a "smart" washing machine by
attaching a `Raspberry Pi <https://www.raspberrypi.org/>`__ that then
talks to your other smart devices and alerts you when a load of laundry
is done and how many loads of laundry you've done that day.

.. figure:: https://i.imgur.com/EcRl4HP.png
:alt: Example Diagram

Example Diagram
One way to communicate between the Raspberry Pi and your other devices
is to send status "packets" or byte data across a network. Let's say we
want to know the following in our packet:

- Status - a Boolean that represents whether the Washing Machine is
running or stopped
- Number of Loads - an Integer that represents the number of loads done
that day

To create this packet in ``CalPack`` is simple:

::

from calpack import models

class MachineStatus(models.Packet):
Status = models.BooleanField()
Num_Loads = models.IntField()

On our monitoring device (the Raspberry Pi), we can easily create the
byte data for the packet by using our new packet:

::

status_pkt = MachineStatus(
Status=True,
Num_Loads=12
)

# Send the byte data using an assumed custom `send` funcion
send(status_pkt.to_bytes())

And converting the recieved byte data is simple as well:

::

# assuming a `receive` function and returns the byte data of the sent packet
received_data = MachineSatus.from_bytes(receive())
print(received_data.status)

Installation
------------

This package is maintained in
`GitHub <https://github.com/KronoSKoderS/CalPack>`__ and packaged for
deployment on `PyPi <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/calpack>`__.

Simply using ``pip install calpack`` will get this installed.

SHOW ME THE DOCS
----------------

Documentation is host on `read the
docs <https://readthedocs.org/projects/concorde/>`__

Python 2 and 3
--------------

Currently this module is designed to work for both Python 2.7+ and 3.3+,
however, with the term of life for Python 2 nearing, this package will
eventually port entirely over to Python 3.

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.. |Calvin and Hobbes Strip| image:: http://assets.amuniversal.com/8d40c700deba01317193005056a9545d.png
:target: http://www.gocomics.com/calvinandhobbes/1987/03/23