To motivate method chaining, let's take a simple English sentence and translate the chain of events into a chain of methods. Consider the sentence, A person drives to the store to buy food, then drives home and prepares, cooks, serves, and eats the food before cleaning the dishes.

A Python version of this sentence might take the following form:

>>> person.drive('store')
          .buy('food')
          .drive('home')
          .prepare('food')
          .cook('food')
          .serve('food')
          .eat('food')
          .cleanup('dishes')

In the preceding code, the person is the object calling each of the methods, just as the person is performing all of the actions in the original sentence. The parameter passed to each of the methods specifies how the method operates.

Although it is possible to write the entire method chain in a single unbroken line, it is far more palatable to write a single method per line. Since Python does not normally allow a single expression to be written on multiple lines, you need to use the backslash line continuation character. Alternatively, you may wrap the whole expression in parentheses. To improve readability even more, place each method directly under the dot above it. This recipe shows similar method chaining with pandas Series.