How to Code

Here are some tips on codebase maintenances/cleanliness:

• Always blacken your code. black is a Python codebase formatter, just run black src and/or black tests from the root before opening a PR. Otherwise, the precommit part of the CI pipeline will fail.

• Always add type hints to your functions/classes. In the below code example, the type hints are int, List[str], and List[Paper]. You will have to import some of these types.

• Use Sphinx style docstrings, like the following. This allows Sphinx to generate the API reference part of this website.

class ArXivSource(PaperSource):
    """A class to represent a source of papers from ArXiv."""

    baseURL = "http://export.arxiv.org/api/query?search_query=all:"

    def getPapers(self, count: int, keyWords: List[str]) -> List[Paper]:
        """
        Get a list of papers from ArXiv that match the given keywords.

        :param count: The number of papers to retrieve.
        :type count: int
        :param keyWords: A list of keywords to match.
        :type keyWords: List[str]
        :return: A list of matching papers.
        :rtype: List[Paper]
        """

• Always write tests in the tests/ directory. Every function you write should have a corresponding test that proves it works. You should even write tests before writing the function itself! This is called Test Driven Development (TDD).

• For API tests, add @pytest.mark.API_test like below. This allows them to be skipped during CI pipeline runs.

@pytest.mark.API_test
def test_arxiv_source():