Merge pull request #72 from it176131/isort-post

Isort post

Author: it176131

_posts/2024-12-12-isort.md

@@ -0,0 +1,144 @@
+---
+layout: "post"
+title: "isort + git: Cleaner Import Statements for Those Who Don't Like pre-commit"
+date: 2024-12-12
+---
+
+> [!NOTE]
+> 
+> This is for the readers who don't want to run [`isort` as a `pre-commit` hook](https://pycqa.github.io/isort/docs/configuration/pre-commit.html),
+> but do want to organize their imports in one fell swoop.
+> 
+> Personally, I use [`pre-commit`](https://pre-commit.com/) as it saves me from having to remember to sort my imports before submitting a PR.
+> But that's me.
+
+While reviewing pull requests (PRs) at work, I sometimes notice that the imports are kind of... disorganized.
+```python
+# A made-up example.
+
+from itertools import chain
+from . import local_module
+import pandas as pd
+import numpy as np
+from typing import Generator
+
+...
+
+```
+I can't fault any single author for this, it just happens over time.
+To help myself and future authors of the codebase,
+I try to make suggestions that make it easier to read or add a bit more structure.
+
+On a recent PR I made the suggestion to use [`isort`](https://pycqa.github.io/isort/) on all the modified files.
+Then it occurred to me that if there were more than a few modified files, this could be quite tedious!
+To do this more lazily—er,
+I mean _efficiently_!—I could take advantage of [`git`](https://git-scm.com/) to get a list of modified files
+and feed them to `isort` as arguments.
+
+# `git` the modified files
+> [!NOTE]
+> 
+> If you don't already use `git` to track your files, I highly recommend starting.
+> It's helped me in more ways that I can mention, and I find myself learning something new more often than not.
+
+`git` tracks changes to files and writes those as [`commit`](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-commit)s to a [`log`](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-log).
+Normally it's a best practice to make changes to a branch different from your primary branch
+(i.e. "main", "master", etc.),
+then open a pull request to merge those changes into the primary branch.
+This keeps code from being pushed to users without being reviewed or passing tests, among other things.
+
+Another benefit of tracking work on a separate branch is
+you can see which files have been added or modified when compared with the primary branch with [`git diff`](https://git-scm.com/docs/git-diff).
+
+Assuming we're on our feature branch and synced with the main branch,
+we can get the list of files like so:
+```shell
+$ git diff main --name-only
+_posts/2024-12-12-isort.md
+```
+Here we can see that the only file different from my main branch is "_posts/2024-12-12-isort.md",
+the blog post I'm currently writing.
+
+>[!NOTE]
+> 
+> We can go a bit further by limiting the file types like so:
+> ```shell
+> $ git diff main --name-only -- *.py
+> ```
+> 
+> This returns nothing on my machine because I haven't added/modified any git-tracked *.py files on this branch.
+
+# `isort` the modified files
+Now that we have a convenient way to identify our modified files,
+let's save them to a variable and `isort` them.
+
+First we save:
+```shell
+$ files=$(git diff main --name-only -- *.py)
+```
+
+Then we `isort`:
+```shell
+$ isort $files
+```
+
+And that's it!
+Well, technically you would `git commit` your changes and `git push` them to update your PR,
+but you get the [`gist`](https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/writing-on-github/editing-and-sharing-content-with-gists/creating-gists). 😉
+
+# Bonus
+As a final sendoff,
+I'll share the diff-result of applying `isort` to the example import statements above,
+as well as my preferred `isort` configurations à la [`.isort.cfg`](https://pycqa.github.io/isort/docs/configuration/config_files.html#isortcfg-preferred-format).
+
+Results:
+```shell
+$ isort main.py --diff
+```
+```diff
+ # A made-up example.
+ 
+ from itertools import chain
++
++import numpy as np
++import pandas as pd
++
+ from . import local_module
+-import pandas as pd
+-import numpy as np
+
+ ...
+
+```
+
+Config:
+```text
+[settings]
+profile = black
+line_length = 79
+force_alphabetical_sort_within_sections = true
+force_sort_within_sections = true
+group_by_package = true
+honor_noqa = true
+remove_redundant_aliases = true
+float_to_top = true
+color_output = true
+combine_as_imports = true
+```
+
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