Question

I tend to obsess about expressing code the most compactly and succinctly possible without sacrificing runtime efficiency.

Here’s my code:

p_audio = plate.parts.filter(content__iendswith=".mp3") 
p_video = not p_audio and plate.parts.filter(content__iendswith=".flv") 
p_swf =   not p_audio and not p_video and plate.parts.filter(content__iendswith=".swf") 
extra_context.update({
  'p_audio':  p_audio and p_audio[0],
  'p_video':  p_video and p_video[0],
  'p_swf':    p_swf and   p_swf[0]
})

Are there any python/django gurus that can drastically shorten this code?

Answer 1

Besides featuring less redundancy, this is also way easier to extend with new content types.

kinds = (("p_audio", ".mp3"), ("p_video", ".flv"), ("p_swf", ".swf"))
extra_context.update((key, False) for key, _ in kinds)

for key, ext in kinds:
    entries = plate.parts.filter(content__iendswith=ext)
    if entries:
        extra_context[key] = entries[0]
        break