Create a Folder Structure¶

A small but important part of a project is creating folders for your code. In the Python world, there is a standard structure that you will find in many other projects. The next few steps let you create one.

Step 1: A package folder¶

First, you need a place for the package you want to write. A Python package is simply a folder that contains .py files. Create a folder dungeon_explorer inside your repository. On the bash terminal, you would use

mkdir dungeon_explorer

If your project folder (with the git repo) is also called dungeon_explorer, you may want to rename the project folder to something else like dungeon_project or similar. Having two folders called dungeon_explorer inside each other could lead to strange import bugs later

Step 2: A folder for tests¶

You will also want to have a place where you add test code later. Name that folder tests/. We will leave it empty for now.

mkdir tests

Step 3: Create a Python module¶

You may want to create a Python module (a .py file) to make sure everything is set up correctly. Create a file game.py inside the dungeon_explorer/ folder. Add a placeholder function to it:

def play():
    print('this is the Dungeon Explorer game')

Now start Python in your main project folder (above the package) through the terminal. It is important that you start Python in your project folder. It will probably not work from your IDE at this point. The code that you want to get running is:

from dungeon_explorer.game import play

play()

You should see the message from the print statement.

Step 4: main Python file¶

Importing the play() function to play the game is a bit inconvenient. Let’s create a shortcut. Create a file named __main__.py (with double underscores on both ends) in the package folder that contains the following code:

from game import play

play()

Now it should be possible to start the game by typing:

python dungeon_explorer

Summary¶

At this point, your project folder should contain:

LICENSE
prototype.py
README.md
dungeon_explorer/
    game.py
    __main__.py
tests/