Python: Implement a custom context manager

The context manager type is a Python feature to help work with unmanaged resources (e.g. file streams) which it is better to clean up or shutdown in an orderly manner after use, e.g. always closing a file after use).

The use of the with statement (on objects that support it, such as built-in or custom context managers) is used to ensure resources are cleaned up after use.

with can be seen as syntactic sugar for the try/except/finally block.

To implement a custom context manager, two methods must be implemented:

class my_context_manager:
  def __enter__(self):
      # set up things
      return thing
  def __exit__(self,type,value,traceback):
      # deal with unmanaged resources

with my_context_manager as custom_name
   # work with resources

When the with statement is executed, __enter__ is called, assigning the returned value to the variable after as.

Whatever happens in the code, the __exit__ method will be called in the end to make sure nothing is left unmanaged.

Via enki.com.