Automate Your Life: Five Tasks That You Can Perform with Python

One of the most interesting things about Python is how practical it can be. Python has an extensive collection of libraries and modules that can simplify almost any task (even everyday tasks). Whether you're automating tasks, analyzing data, or working with text, there's probably a Python module to help you do it better. In this article, I want to introduce you to five cool Python modules that you should consider using in your scripts. These modules offer unique functionalities that can handle some of your everyday tasks, such as taking screenshots, zipping files, and so forth.

1. Taking Screenshots with Python

Python has a library called Pyautogui. This library is useful primarily for automating graphical user interface (GUI) tasks. It allows you to simulate user actions, such as clicking buttons, typing text, or moving the mouse cursor. Did you know that with just a few lines of code, it can take a screenshot of your computer? Before you use this library, you have to install it on your computer. You can install it using pip:

pip install pyautogui

If you run the script below, it will take a screenshot of your computer, and it will save an image in the same directory as your Python script.

By default, this is captured in RGB (Red, Green, and Blue) color space. Certain libraries, like OpenCV, often work with images in BRG (Blue, Green, and Red) color spaces. We can convert the screenshot to BRG color space with the help of NumPy and cv2. See below:

In the code above, after capturing the screenshot, the image is converted to BGR color space and saved as a PNG image.

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2. Censoring Profanity in Text

Sometimes, when you are working with texts, you may want to censor certain words that you deem inappropriate. The Python Better Profanity library is a great tool to censor offensive language in your text. It's easy to install and use, and it provides powerful functionality to clean up text. First, install the module using pip:

pip install better_profanity

Here’s a sample text with profanity that we want to censor:

You can see here that the library detects the offensive words in the text and censors them. By default, Better Profanity uses an asterisk (*) to censor bad words. However, we can customize the censor character. See below:

We can also use the library to check if a string contains a bad word using the contains_profanity method. This method will return a boolean value of True if a string has offensive words and False if it does not. See below:

This is not all. We can also create a custom list of words that we want to censor. If those words are in the string, then they will be censored. Below, we want the word 'code' to be censored:

You can see that only the 'code' has been censored above.

3. Zipping Files

Occasionally, we all find ourselves in situations where we have to zip some files. Lucky for you and me, Python provides a library that we can use to zip files with just a few lines of code. The Python shutil library module, which provides utility functions for operating on files and directories, can be used to zip files too. Here is the code that you can use to zip files:

To use the code, you need to replace the placeholder files_to_zip with the actual file paths that you want to zip. You can also modify the zip_filename variable to specify the desired name for the ZIP archive.

4. Generating Fake Data

Do you want to generate fake, realistic data? Then you can use the Python Faker library. This library is ideal for generating sample data for testing applications or databases. This library can be used to generate realistic fake data such as names, addresses, phone numbers, and much more First, you can install the library using pip:

pip install faker

Let's say we want to generate 10 random countries. Here is how we can use this library:

This library can also generate data that we can convert into a DataFrame using pandas. See below:

You can see that we have generated data that looks realistic and has been converted to a DataFrame.

5. Removing Backgrounds From Pictures

Do you want to remove backgrounds from images? You can use Python to get that done too. Python has a rembg library for removing image backgrounds. Here is the image that we are going to use to demonstrate how the library works:

We are going to remove the background of this image using the code below. You can install the libraries used using pip:

pip install rembg Pillow

This will install both rembg and the Pillow (PIL) libraries. The PIL (Python Imaging Library) is used for handling image files. We need the PIL library in the code below to read the image to be processed.

Let's see the image after processing:

You can see that the image has the background removed. This demonstrates how you can automate the process of removing backgrounds from images.

Conclusion

Is it not great that we can do all these things with Python? These are just a few things that you can do with Python to handle some everyday tasks. The examples we've explored in this article demonstrate the incredible versatility of Python. It's not just a programming language; it's a powerful tool that can simplify your daily life and boost your productivity. Thanks for reading.

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