Built-in Context Managers in Python

Built-in Context Managers in Python

This article explores concept of context manager and some of the Python’s built-in context managers. So, let’s begin.

What is a Context Manager?

A context manager is a Python object that allows you to manage resources. Context managers in Python are a convenient and efficient way to manage resources such as file handles, sockets, and database connections. It abstracts the setup and cleanup logic, making your code more expressive and less prone to errors. A context manager is used with the aid of the with statement.

A context manager is an object that specifies the runtime context to be used when executing a with statement. The context manager is responsible for entering and exiting the desired runtime context for the block of code to be executed.

Technically, a context manager is an object which must implement the context management protocol. The context management protocol involves the two methods below:

1. __enter__(): Called when entering the with block. It sets up the resource. The setup code involves opening or preparing resources, like a file, socket or thread pool.
2. __exit__(exc_type, exc_value, traceback): Called when exiting the with block. It handles cleanup such as such as closing a prepared resource. It also handles exceptions.