The Power of Python Decorators
At their core, Python’s decorators allow you to extend and modify the behavior of a callable (functions, methods, and classes) without permanently modifying the callable itself.
Any sufficiently generic functionality you can tack on to an existing class or function’s behavior makes a great use case for decoration. This includes the following:
- logging
- enforcing access control and authentication
- instrumentation and timing functions
- rate-limiting
- caching and more
Sure, decorators are relatively complicated to wrap your head around for the first time, but they’re a highly useful feature that you’ll often encounter in third-party frameworks and the Python standard library. Explaining decorators is also a make or break moment for any good Python tutorial. I’ll do my best here to introduce you to them step by step.