Expose core functionality through `__all__` in `__init__.py`

[julianstirling]

labthings-fastapi is a reasonably large library divided into many different files. This however means that using labthings-fastapi tends to include mega import blocks like:

This is has a few issues:

• Imports get large and scary
• In the rest of the code it is not clear what functions come directly from labthings-fastapi without going looking
• Anyone using labthings-fastapi but lookup/remember the file structure to get to commonly used functionality
• If labthings-fastapi changes its internal structure, the public API changes too

In contrast:

import numpy as np

is very clean, exposes a huge amount of functionality, and all of that functionality is clearly from NumPy as each command starts with np.

Proposal

Pick the most core functionality and expose it with __all__ from __init__.py. So that it is possible to import with the line

import labthings-fastapi as lt

This should allow the user to access:

• lt.Thing
• lt.thing_action
• lt.thing_property
• lt.GetThingStates
• lt.BlockingPortal
• lt.BlockingPortal
• lt.direct_thing_client_dependency
• lt.raw_thing_dependency
• lt.InvocationLogger
• lt.MJPEGStreamDescriptor
• lt.Blob
• lt.NDArray

This would simplify the examples as for some of the examples the import lines are about 40% of the examples. Also if this syntax is used in testing it will make it clear whether the public API has changed when reorganising the underlying file structure.