A Library is a collection of files (known as Modules) that contains functions for use by other programs. It means that Python Libraries are a reusable piece of code that we can add to our programmes.
They may also contain data values like numerical constants and other things. Library’s contents are supposed to be related, but there’s no way to enforce that. The Python standard library is an extensive suite of modules that comes with Python itself. Many additional libraries are available from PyPI (the Python Package Index) and from here we can conclude that a package is a library that can be installed using a package manager like RubyGems or npm.
What is a Python library?
A Python library is a collection of pre-written code modules that provide a set of functionalities to perform specific tasks. These libraries contain reusable functions, classes, and constants that programmers can leverage to expedite development, avoid reinventing the wheel, and build more robust and complex applications.
List of Top 10 Libraries in Python 2024
- Matplotlib
- NumPy
- Pandas
- Scipy
- PyGame
- Pyglet
- Scrapy
- SymPy
- Fabric
- Pillow
Now let's discuss them in detail:
1. Matplotlib
It is one of the very important Python Library that helps us to deal with data analysis and is a numerical plotting library. Actually, It is a Python 2D plotting library which produces quality figures in a variety of Hardcopy Formats and interactive environment across platforms. Matplotlib can be used in Python Scripts, Python and Python shell. It tries to make easy things easy and hard things possible. In this, we can generate plots, Histograms, Power Spectra etc with a few lines of codes.
2. NumPy
It is one of the fundamental libraries of Python, which has advanced math functions and a package of scientific computing with Python. It is useful for linear Algebra, Fourier Transformation and other various complex Mathematical functions.NumPy can also be used as an efficient multi-dimensional container of generic data, arbitrary data types are also defined in NumPy which makes it speedily integrate with a wide variety of database.
3. Pandas
Pandas, an open-source library, operates under the BSD (Berkeley Software Distribution) license. It is used for Data Science. It is used for Data Analysis purposes as it provides fast, expressive and flexible data structures to easily work with structured and time-series data in Python Programming Language.
4. Scipy
This library of Python is most popular, as we have been reading so much about this. It is just another form which may be used in place of NumPy. They use NumPy for more mathematical functions. SciPy uses NumPy arrays as their basic data structure and comes with modules for various commonly used task in scientific Programming, including Ordinary differential equations solving and signal processing.
5. PyGame
It is a set of Python modules which is used to create video games. It consists of computer graphics and sound libraries that are designed to be used with the Python programming language. Pygame was officially written by Pete Shinners to replace PySDL. Pygame is suitable to create client-side applications that can be potentially wrapped in a standalone executable.
6. Pyglet
It is a cross-platform windowing and multimedia library for python. Pyglet is an excellent choice for an object-oriented programming interface in developing games. In fact, it also finds use in developing other visually-rich applications for Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux. In the 90s, when people were bored, they resorted to playing Minecraft on their computers. Pyglet is the engine behind Minecraft.
7. Scrapy
If your motive is fast, high-level screen scraping and web crawling, then go for Scrapy. It is used to crawl websites and extract structured data from their pages. It can be used for a wide range of purposes, from data mining to monitoring and automated testing.
8. SymPy
It is an open-source library for symbolic mathematics. With very simple and comprehensible code that is easily extensible, SymPy is a full-fledged Computer Algebra System (CAS). It is written in Python and hence does not need external libraries.
9. Fabric
Along with being a library, Fabric is a command-line tool for streamlining the use of SSH for application deployment or systems administration tasks. Fabric is very simple and powerful and can help to automate repetitive command-line tasks. This approach can save time by automating our entire workflow. With Fabric, we can execute local or remote shell commands, upload/download files, and even prompt running user for input, or abort execution.
10. Pillow
It is a Python Imaging Library(PIL), which adds support for opening, manipulating, and saving images. The current version identifies and reads a large number of formats. Pillow allows us to get some basic information about images.