Refactoring legacy code with Python 3.x: how to handle deprecated libraries and improve maintainability?
I've looked through the documentation and I'm still confused about I need some guidance on I'm working on a personal project and While refactoring a legacy application written in Python 3.6, I've come across the problematic usage of libraries that are now deprecated. The original code relies heavily on a combination of `requests` and `beautifulsoup4` for scraping data, but I'm concerned about maintainability and potential security issues as these packages evolve. The current implementation looks something like this: ```python import requests from bs4 import BeautifulSoup url = 'http://example.com/data' response = requests.get(url) if response.status_code == 200: soup = BeautifulSoup(response.text, 'html.parser') data = soup.find_all('div', class_='data-item') ``` My goal is to not only refactor this code for clarity but also to prepare it for potential updates in the future. I've considered switching to `httpx`, which offers async capabilities, but the codebase is not currently set up for async processing. Additionally, I noticed the application performs unoptimized parsing of HTML, which could lead to performance bottlenecks. 1. Should I refactor the HTTP requests to use `httpx`, or stick with `requests` to avoid extensive changes? 2. What's the best strategy for handling the parsing of HTML to improve efficiency without breaking existing functionality? 3. Are there any recommended design patterns or principles I should follow during this refactor to ensure better maintainability moving forward? I've seen some discussions suggesting to use `lxml` for parsing, which may offer better performance, but I'm concerned about compatibility with existing code patterns. Any advice on these points would be greatly appreciated! My development environment is macOS. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building. Any help would be greatly appreciated! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Any suggestions would be helpful. Any feedback is welcome!