Chapter 5. Decorators – Enabling Code Reuse by Decorating

In this chapter, you are going to learn about Python decorators. Decorators are essentially function/class wrappers that can be used to modify the input, output, or even the function/class itself before executing it. This type of wrapping can just as easily be achieved by having a separate function that calls the inner function, or via mixins. As is the case with many Python constructs, decorators are not the only way to reach the goal but are definitely convenient in many cases.

While you can live perfectly without knowing too much about decorators, they give you a lot of "reuse power" and are therefore used heavily in framework libraries such as web frameworks. Python actually comes bundled with some useful decorators, most notably the property decorator.

There are, however, some particularities to take note of: wrapping a function creates a new function and makes it harder to reach the inner function and...