Decorators wrap or modify your functions. They are functions themselves, so you can pass parameters to them. You can wrap a function with multiple decorators too. We'll cover how to use decorators in all those situations and how to write them too. Examples will be demonstrated with:

• @property
• @memoize
• mock/patch
• TurboGears
• Django
• Allura

Context managers wrap a block of code using the 'with' statement to do something on the way into the block and something on the way out. Opening and closing a file is a very common case, but there is a lot more you can do. Examples include:

• modifying state
• capturing stdout
• mock/patch
• locks
• timing
• transactions

More about decorators:

• http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0318/
• the decorator module

More about context managers:

• http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0343/
• http://docs.python.org/library/contextlib.html