Empty Thoughts

This Week in Django 35 has been posted. Don’t miss it. We catch up with Robert Lofthouse, Chairman of DjangoCon and EuroDjangoCon.

Django documentation has been refactored (Changeset 8506) using the excellent Sphinx – Python documentation generator. This is the same package used to generate the new Python documentation Check out the new docs at http://docs.djangoproject.com/. Now I have to go and update all my shortcut snippets. Thanks go especially to Jacob Kaplan-Moss and numerous contributors for all of their hard work on this one.

This Week in Django 34 has been posted.

This week we discuss Django 1.0 Beta 1, a bunch of source commits, some cool projects from the community, and a tip of the week.

Just released is Django 1.0-Beta 1. This is another huge milestone in the push towards Django 1.0. This also means that we are likely to see a more stable trunk, so it looks like it’s heads down on Django once again. Check out the release notes for more information.

But the coding never stops. Tomorrow begins the Release Candidate sprint in Austin, TX and via IRC on freenode #django-sprint. Jump in and squash bugs.

I want to thank all of the contributors for their very hard work.

This Week in Django 33 has been posted.

This week we discuss the NEW This Week in Django site, a bunch of source commits, and some cool projects from the community.

All show notes from now on will be on the new This Week in Django dedicated site.

This Week in Django will be delayed this week. We hope to get it out by tomorrow evening. We have been experiencing technical difficulties. Thank you, and now back to our regular scheduled program…

Django 1.0 Alpha 2 was just released. This release adds in GeoDjango, Intermediary models and file storage refactor. Grab a copy and test it out.

With Changeset 8244 we now have File Storage refactoring in the Django trunk. This was one of the big Version 1.0 items and helps get Django closer to the goal line. Congratulations are in order to Marty Alchin for all of his hard work over umpteen months. I really thought it would never make it. :)

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we have a very special guest, Justin Bronn, creator of GeoDjango the GIS branch of Django. We also discuss a few source commits, some cool projects from the community, and the Tip of the Week.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (53.6 MB, 1:08:44, AAC)

MP3 Edition (47.3 MB, 1:08:44, MP3)

OGG Edition (34.4 MB, 1:08:44, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News (0:48)

• DjangoCon tickets have come and go. If you didn’t get yours sign up for the waiting list.
  • Robert Lofthouse announces waiting list

• Version 1.0
  • Beta 1 scheduled to drop on 8/5/08.
  • Push to Beta 2 sprint – Friday August 8, 2008 in Lawrence, KS and on IRC (#django-sprint).
  • Django Sprint in Berlin

Interview – Justin Bronn (5:11)

Justin Bronn is a computer scientist and third-year law student at the University of Houston who enjoys studying legal topics related to intellectual property and spatial law. Prior to creating GeoDjango, Justin worked as a patent engineer for an intellectual property boutique in Houston and developed scientific data analysis applications for the Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio.

CartoAnalytics is Justin Bronn’s consulting company. CartoAnalytics provides innovative solutions to harness the power of your geospatial data.

• Getting started with GeoDjango
  • GeoDjango Site
  • GeoDjango Wiki
  • GeoDjango Docs
  • GeoDjango: Web Applications for Geographers with Deadlines – Video of presentation From O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference, Burlingame, CA, May 14, 2008.
  • GeoDjango Presentation at FOSS4G2007
  • An IRC channel is available – join #geodjango on freenode.

• Other items mentioned
  • Houston Crime Maps – excellent reference application for GeoDjango.
  • The limited_related admin plugin.
  • Take Control of Your Maps – Excellent article by Paul Smith on using OpenLayers

• Open source geospatial libraries:
  • GDAL
  • GEOS
  • PostGIS
  • OpenLayers
  • Mapnik

• Data sources
  • OSGeo blog aggregate
  • Census Bureau TIGER/Line Shapefile page

Tracking Trunk (39:51)

• Addition of Intermediate Models (8136) – Excellent addition by Eric Forenzano and Russell Keith-Magee that allows you to add join models with extra attributes.
  • Django Model Documentation
  • Django Admin Documentation
  • Intermediary Models and PyMag – Blog post by Eric Florenzano discussing intermediary models.
• Implemented a secure password reset form (8162) – It uses a token and prompts user for new password, plus also adds base36 encoding and decoding.

• Ensure custom primary keys are shown on the formset (8179)

• Removed several deprecated features for 1.0 (8191) – Removes:
  • “simple” cache backend
  • ObjectPaginator
  • edit_inline_type argument for ForeignKey fields
  • QOperator, QNot, QAnd and QOr
  • maxlength argument

Community Catchup (48:10)

• django-command-extensions becomes django-extensions – We’re renaming the project and the import point from extensions to django_extensions. This will happen in one week.

• Admin Image Widget Pete Baumgartner, LincolnLoop, posted this nice snippet that displays an image instead of a file path if the current file is an image. If you read the comments, another user updated the code generating the thumbnails to use the popular django open source project sorl-thumbnail

• How Django is good for SEO Patrick Beeson is a project manager for E.W. Scripps Interactive Newspaper Group in Knoxville, TN. In the past Patrick has published a few good django related posts but this was is of interest because it discussed one of the many “out of the box” application benefits the django toolset provides.

• django-assets – Asset management for Django. Automatically compresses javascript files. Supports the following filters: jsmin, jspacker, csstidy, cssutils, yui_js, yui_css, gzip, cssrewrite.

• Translating Django apps. Good practices – Great rundown by Marc Garcia on how to go about translating your Django applications. Marc is the Django localizer for the Catalan language. Learn more about Marc and localization on This Week in Django 20.

• Threaded Comments For Your Site Eric Florenzano’s article for the relatively new Python Magazine was published this month. Eric talks about his open source google code project django-threadedcomments and how to integrate the simple yet flexible threaded commenting system for Django-based websites.

Tip of the Week (1:00:50)

Use decorator_from_middleware to create a decorator that can be used in your views, which wraps up a middleware class.

from django.utils.decorators import decorator_from_middleware 
from django.middleware.middlewaremodule import MiddlewareClass 

decoratorfunc = decorator_from_middleware(MiddlewareClass)

This code is not documented but added as part of cache reworking. See this thread for more information:

• GoogleGroups Discussion

Thank You! (1:03:19)

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

• Kevin Fricovsky
  • Monty Lounge Industries – Kevin’s web strategy, design, and development company.
  • How I Work Daily – Kevin’s blog.

• Michael Trier
  • Michael on Twitter

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we discuss Satchmo, the Django open-source E-Commerce application with Chris Moffitt and Bruce Kroeze. We also look at a few source commits and some cool projects from the community.

Apologies for some of the microphone noise.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (89.3 MB, 1:52:43, AAC)

MP3 Edition (77.4 MB, 1:52:43, MP3)

OGG Edition (63.3 MB, 1:52:43, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News (0:00)

• PyOhio was amazing. Kudos to Catherine Devlin for doing an awesome job.
• Django 1.0 Alpha – Test it out and provide feedback.
• Django Push to Beta Sprint – August 1 in Washington, DC and on IRC.
• Twiderrific on Twitter

Interview – Satchmo Developers (8:33)

Satchmo is a Django based E-Commerce solution.

• Chris Moffitt – Project Lead
  • Satchmo Blog
  • Django People Page
• Bruce Kroeze
  • Coder’s Eye Blog
  • Solid Site Solutions
  • GoSatchmo – Commercial support site for Satchmo

• Mentioned Items
  • OSCommerce – Popular PHP based E-Commerce solution.
  • Pinax – reusable apps reference application.
  • Free Software Foundation
  • Ooh-Ga-Boo-Ga – Huge installation of Satchmo

Tracking Trunk (1:02:46)

• Changed/fixed the way Django handles SCRIPT_NAME and PATH_INFO (8015) – Basically, URL resolving will only use the PATH_INFO and the SCRIPT_NAME will be prepended by reverse() automatically. Allows for more portable development and installation. Also exposes SCRIPT_NAME in the HttpRequest instance.

• To ensure that a model BooleanField? has an explicit value set (8050): – Since it’s not required, by default, set the default properly in the constructor.

• Handle sitemaps with more than 50,000 URLs in them (8088) – Implemented by using pagination.
  • sitemaps spec limit of 50,000.

Community Catchup (1:08:41)

• Callcast – Discussion with Nathan Borror – Another great discussion by Kevin Fricovsky, this time with Nathan Borror.
  • django-basic-apps

• Semantic Django – David Larlet’s website where he archives a collection of open source semantic reusable django apps including such technologies as OpenID, OAuth, Microformats, RDF, FOAF, REST, Atom, Snippets and Patchs.

• Top ten things that suck about Django, revisited – Jeff Croft does a follow up article on a post he did two years ago updating the status of the items needing improvement.
  • sorl-thumbnail

• Automating tests in Django – Great post by Eric Holscher that goes through how to create integration tests for your Django applications in an automated way through the use of a Middleware that logs the test creation output to a file.
  • Automating Test Creation – Empty’s feedback on it.
  • Testmaker .002 – Eric updates us with new additions to his open source test project including adding a management command, making it simple to add TestMaker to your project just but adding a reference to INSTALLED_APPS.

• Building a Community Site with Django in 40 Hours or Less – Excellent writeup on the Lincoln Loop blog that shows how they quickly built out a Biking Trail application in Django on top of the Pinax platform.
  • Sphene Community Tools

• Django Subdomains – Every have the requirement to implement customized subdomains in your django app, mapping to a model key? It makes for clean, personal, simple to remember url (ex. username.yourappname.com). If you’ve ever used the popular Basecamp web application you’re familiar with their URL structure – [companyname].projectpath.com. This tutorials details how you can do the same as well as references other posts who attempted the same thing, and issues they all ran into along the way.

• Creator/updater fields for admin – Peter Baumgartner, LincolnLoop, recently got his hands dirty customizing a newforms-admin implementation and created a a customized ModelAdmin class that sets fields for models saved in admin corresponding to the user that created the object and the user that last updated the object. Seems trivial for the currently edited model but the catalyst for this was making sure inlines received the same auditing synchronization. He also leverage JQuery to provide additional client side logic.

• Replacing Django’s ORM with SQLAlchemy – Will Larson steps through how to use SQLAlchemy within Django but replacing the ORM.
  • Replacing Django’s ORM with SQLAlchemy – Empty’s feedback on it.
  • Tranquil – another way to use SQLAlchemy with Django.

• FLOSS Weekly interviews Jacob Kaplan-Moss – Randal Schwartz interviews Jacob Kaplan-Moss at OSCON about Django.

Thank You! (1:46:38)

• NERD_Tree – Excellent VIM plugin that gives a project drawer like behavior.

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

• Kevin Fricovsky
  • Monty Lounge Industries – Kevin’s web strategy, design, and development company.
  • How I Work Daily – Kevin’s blog

• Michael Trier
  • Empty Thoughts Blog
  • Michael on Twitter

With Changeset 8136 Django gains the ability to specify intermediate models in a declarative way. This makes it possible to have extra attributes on your many-to-many join table. Check out the docs for more information.

I’ve been watching this one for almost a very long time and I’m glad to see it get in. Special thanks go to Eric Florenzano and Russell Keith-Magee

Eric Holscher just posted a very nice article titled Automating tests in Django. The post goes through how to create integration tests for your Django applications in an automated way through the use of a Middleware that logs the test creation output to a file. It’s a creative approach and certainly very interesting. One additional benefit is that Eric created a screencast to go along with the post that is excellently done.

There is one thing about this approach to testing that doesn’t quite sit right with me and that’s that it seems like the testing process is backwards. If you’re creating tests based on what you have how are you possibly going to cover what’s specified but not implemented properly? It’s the same reason I’m not a fan of doctests. I think they encourage the wrong behavior, especially when often the output your matching to is so complex that the tendency is to just copy and paste from live results. I recognize that a lot of people don’t feel the same way, and perhaps I just need to give the idea more time to sink in.

I really appreciate all of the screencasts that are starting to show up within the Django community. I think it’s a vehicle that a lot of people enjoy and learn well from. I know that I’m certainly looking foward to more screencasts from Eric.

Will Larson just created a post titled Replacing Django’s ORM with SQLAlchemy that covers using SQLAlchemy with a Django project. It’s a great write-up, and generally what Django folks are referring to when they say, “of course you can use SQLAlchemy with Django.” I think Will does a good job of stepping you through the important bits.

One thing I appreciate is that the post hints at some of the negatives of doing something like this. You lose things like generic views, all contrib apps including the admin, most of the management commands, and some smaller pieces that are embedded in various parts of the framework. Tread this way cautiously.

Another item in the post that got my attention was when Will mentioned the following in reference to the possibility of doing a full drop in replacement for the Django ORM, essentially allowing you to use fully the Django bits alongside of the SQLAlchemy pieces:

This tutorial won’t build that Frankenstein, since it’s only interested in exploring the loose coupling aspect, but it wouldn’t be prohibitively difficult to do so. Although, it would be awkward in some regards.

Well I, and others, have been building “that Frankenstein” for some time now with a project we call Django-SQLAlchemy. There’s also a somewhat defunct project called Tranquil that is a hybrid between what Will demonstrates and what we’re trying to do with django-sqlalchemy.

I’m not sure whether or not these projects are “awkward” or “Frankensteins,” but I can assure you thus far they have been prohibitively difficult, as we see no full implementation for a drop-in replacement still today. Getting the initial stuff in place is pretty darn easy, but as you get into it there are lots of little edge cases that complicate things significantly.

I want to thank Will for the great post. I think he does a great job of talking about the strengths of SQLAlchemy, and hopefully people will be inclined to experiment with the idea of using SQLAlchemy in addition to, or instead of, Django’s ORM.

As we mentioned on This Week in Django 30 Kevin Fricovsky will be joining the podcast as a Community Evangelist. If you’re wondering what that’s all about and how Kevin fits into the show, check out his detailed post on the subject. Both Brian Rosner and I are extremely pleased to have Kevin’s help and support.

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we discuss the NewForms-Admin merge into Trunk, DjangoCon, a few source commits, some cool projects from the community, and the Tip of the Week.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (41.8 MB, 49:31, AAC)

MP3 Edition (34.1 MB, 49:31, MP3)

OGG Edition (27.9 MB, 49:31, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News (0:47)

• NewForms-Admin Branch Merges to Trunk – A huge step towards Version 1.0.
  • Version 1.0 Sprint Schedule
  • NewForms Admin Documentation
  • Updated NewForms Documentation
  • newforms-admin Migration and Screencast – Great way to get started and make the migration to NewForms-Admin.
  • Pre-NFA Merge Tag

• DjangoCon Web Site and DjangoCon Schedule Released – It’s quite a lineup. We hope to see everyone there.

Tracking Trunk (15:04)

• Support for pre-1900 dates (7946)
  • Missing Files From 7946 (7950)

• Removed the mysql_old backend (7949) – According to Malcolm Tredinnick, it smells bad and has no friends.

• updated generic create_update views to use newforms (7952)

• newforms -> forms switch (7971) ** django.newforms is now django.forms. Updated your code.

• Added support for optgroups in models and form fields (7977)
  • Documentation on new optgroups support

• Performance Improvements for urlize and urlizetrunc filters (7985) – This one has bit us on the Django Logger.

• Exception on 400 Response Fallback to 500 Response (7988)

Community Catchup (26:16)

• Kevin Fricovsky – joins the This Week in Django team as Community Evangelist. Kevin will be working to produce the show, contacting guests, gathering news items, coming up with ideas. Kevin has been doing this work regularly anyway so it’s great of him to team up with us to help out the program:
  • Monty Lounge Industries – Kevin’s web strategy, design, and development company.
  • How I Work Daily – Kevin’s blog. You should have this one in your feedreader.

• PyWorks conference – to be held in Atlanta, GA on November 12-14, 2008.

• PyOhio – Reminder that this free one day conference is in Columbus, OH on July 26, 2008.

• Twitter Search – via Kevin Fricovsky using the new Twitter Search capability to track all tweets about django.

• Jinja2 Final aka Jinjavitus Released – Armin Ronacher and the rest of the Pocoo team announced the release of this wicked-fast Django inspired template engine.

• OSCON Python BoF – Tuesday, July 22nd 7pm – 10pm from Jax Bar and Restaurant. Via Jason Kirtland’s excellent blog discorporate.

Tip of the Week (38:32)

This tip comes to us via Ben Jao Ming in his post Django auto-translation of field values.

If you need to translate content in a field then gettext is not going to help you out. Since you can create your own custom fields it’s easy to wrap a CharField with the translation behavior:

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _

class AutoTranslateField(models.CharField):
    __metaclass__ = models.SubfieldBase
    def to_python(self, value):
        return str(_(value))

Just add whatever translations you know of to the locale file and run compilemessages.

Thank You! (42:45)

• 7 Habits For Effective Text Editing 2.0 – Awesome video by Bram Moolenaar
  • Vim Cheatsheet PDF

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

In the ongoing march to Version 1.0, the Django project just tagged and bagged the 1.0 Alpha version with Changeset 8037. I encourage everyone to grab the tarball or svn up and start banging on the latest and greatest code.

update: Django 1.0 alpha release notes

update: Django 1.0 alpha released! blog post

Brian Rosner just released a new screencast and blog post, newforms-admin Migration and Screencast, that walks you through how to get started with migrating to NewForms-Admin from your existing trunk based code. The screencast and accompanying blog post are very well done. It’s great to get this kind of helpful information, especially from someone that knows so much about the internals of the code.

I highly encourage everyone to check it out, especially if you’re on the fence on whether or not the conversion is worth it. Brian shows how easy it is to get started.

Robert Lofthouse just announced that the DjangoCon schedule is available. There are a ton of exciting speakers and topics being presented. It’s going to be a great time and I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there. I am curious if people will be extending the conference into the following week and if sprints are being planned. I’d like to make the most of it.

Brian Rosner just now, with Changeset 7967, merged the NewForms-Admin branch of Django into Trunk. This is a huge step forward in the push to version 1.0. I want to personally thank all of the numerous contributors that have made NewForms-Admin possible. It’s been an enormous amount of work, and I am so appreciative. Thanks!

update: Read the release post.

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we have a special guest, Kevin Fricovsky, that joins us as we talk about DjangoCon, EuroPython, a few source commits, some cool projects from the community, and the Tip of the Week.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (74.2 MB, 1:31:20, AAC)

MP3 Edition (62.8 MB, 1:31:20, MP3)

OGG Edition (51.5 MB, 1:31:20, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News (3:38)

• EuroPython 2008 has come and gone.
  • EuroPython Talk Materials

• DjangoCon – Jacob Kaplan-Moss let the cat out of the bag and let us know that a DjangoCon is being planned for the 1.0 release timeframe for September 6th and 7th. More details to follow. We’ll keep you posted.
  • Official Announcement
  • A Quote from Robert Lofthouse via Simon Willison’s blog.

“DjangoCon 2008. Venue: Googleplex, San Francisco Bay Area. Dates: 6th and 7th Sept. Official post will be on djangoproject.com soon.”

• Callcast – Jacob Kaplan-Moss and DjangoCon 2008

Tracking Trunk (14:27)

• Added a ping_google management command to the sitemaps contrib (7813) – Makes it easy to ping Google once your Sitemap is up and running.

• Fixed #2070: refactored Django’s file upload capabilities. (7814)
  • Django now handles large files nicely in uploads with the new streaming file upload handling.
  • New uploading documentation
  • There have been a ton of fixes since this landed.
  • Multi-part MIME parsing fix (7905)
  • Support pluggable backends for FileField (5361)

• Moved make-messages, compile-messages and daily-cleanup into django-admin.py (7844) – This makes them easily accessible as management commands and reduces the number of binaries and man pages.
  • django-command-extensions – This is a repository for collecting global custom management extensions.
  • Jannis Leidel -

• Rolled QuerySetPaginator into the Paginator class, to simplify things. QuerySetPaginator still exists as an alias, for backwards compatibility. (7865)

Branching and Merging (34:18)

• Added autodiscover functionality to django.contrib.admin. (7872)
  • This makes the admin aware of per-app admin.py modules and does an import on them when explicitly called.

• Added some documentation about media defintions in ModelAdmin classes. (7873)
  • Subtle backward incompatible change

• Learning NewForms-Admin
  • NewForms-Admin Wiki
  • NewForms-Admin HowTo Wiki
  • Django Screencasts 7 – NewForms Admin I

Community Catchup (47:27)

• How to build Django web apps – Looks to be a great workshop with one of Django’s superstars, Jeff Croft.

• How To Build A Web App in Four Days For $10,000

• django-treemenus – Very cool application by Julien Phalip that makes it easy to add tree menus to your Django app and manage the structure dynamically from the customized admin interface. View the 0.4 release post for more information.

• First Two Django Screencasts – Eric Florenzano never sleeps. His first foray into screencasts are quite impressive. He covers: 1. Setting up a Django Environment 2. Using Django-Pagination

• Interview with Jacob Kaplan-Moss – Great interview by Brazilian Marinho Brandão.

• Yahoo’s Build your Own Search Service in Django – Will Larson offers two informative articles on integrating BOSS with Django.
  • Polishing Up Our Django & BOSS Search Service

Tip of the Week (1:10:41)

Mike Axiak offers the following tip for getting started with contributing to Django source code.

1. Find a closed ticket that interests you. 2. Take a look at a closed ticket, but not the patch. 3. Check out the revision prior to the one that closed the ticket. 4. Write a patch for Django with your own implementation. 5. Compare your patch with the committed patch and try to learn from the differences.

Once you’re comfortable do it for real.

• Framework and tests to check for the correct operation of django-admin and manage.py

Thank You! (1:23:24)

• Django-Chunks – Simple keyed content that you can insert into your templates.
• Cloud27 – A social network built on Pinax.
• This Week in Django 24 – Interview with Pinax / Cloud27 founder James Tauber.
• Django-Hotclub Channel

• Kevin Fricovsky
  • How I Work Daily
  • Django-NYC – Discussion group for Django-NYC attendees. If you’re in the NY area, be sure to check it out.

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

There’s been lots of discussion and hints over the past several days about a forthcoming Django based conference called DjangoCon. The official announcement was just released. I’ve always been fond of small intimate group settings and this one will certainly be that with only 200 attendees allowed to participate. I only hope that I get one of the coveted spots.

This morning I got my first glimpse of what will become Cloud27, featuring a sporty design by Greg Newman, and I already like what I see. Cloud27 is a new social network based on Pinax, a Django reference application for reusable applications.

So if there’s Pinax, why Cloud27? Well Pinax is where all development and new ideas happen. Pinax is project intended to provide a starting point for websites. Cloud27 will actually be focussed on building out on the base of Pinax and expanding it into a kick-ass social network application.

To find out a whole lot more about reusable applications and Pinax, I highly recommend a listen to This Week in Django 24, featuring Pinax / Cloud27 founder James Tauber.

I’ll be keeping an eye on Cloud27.

Apologies to all but there will be no This Week in Django podcast this week. Enjoy the week off and we look forward to seeing you all next week on TWiD Live.

Kevin Fricovsky at the HIWD (How I Work Daily) blog just posted a very interesting callcast with Jacob Kaplan-Moss, one of Django’s core developer. In the callcast, Jacob discusses a planned DjangoCon 2008 conference to be held in the San Francisco Bay area. The idea of a conference centered around Django sounds very exciting. I highly recommend that you give it a listen.

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we talk about quite a few source commits (kicking-ass), some cool projects from the community, the Tip of the Week, and a question from the IRC.

Let us know if downloads are better for those of you in Europe.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (50.3 MB, 1:01:06, AAC)

MP3 Edition (42 MB, 1:01:06, MP3)

OGG Edition (32.9 MB, 1:01:06, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News

Malcolm Tredinnick is back!!!

Tracking Trunk (1:08)

• QuerySet Refactor Cleanup – Several tickets related to QuerySet Refactor merge and unrelated but just database stuff in general:
  • Corrected DateQuerySet to handle nullable fields (7739) – Previously if the date field was nullable no results were returned.
  • Corrected values and values_list across nullable joins (7740) – Previously, if we were querying across a nullable join and then a non-nullable one, the second join would not be a LEFT OUTER join, which would exclude certain valid results from the result set.
  • (7741), (7773), and (7760) through (7766) – Lots of miscellaneous QuerySet changes
  • Delete multi-table objects correctly. (7784) – When model inheritance is used, the parent objects should be deleted as part of the delete() call on the child.
  • Changed the way extra() bits are handled when QuerySets? are merged. (7791)

• django.contrib.auth no longer requires Sites framework (7748)

• Allow cache tag timeout value to be a variable (7754)

• Removed an unused OrderingField (7794)

• Normalize file paths for get_FIELD_filename (7795)

• exact lookups in MySQL are now case-sensitive (7798)

• Enforce the required attribute on BooleanField (7799)

• Allow empty content in flatpages. (7807)

• Removed default ordering on the User class (7806)

Community Catchup (19:28)

• Django newforms-admin upgrade – Luke Plant discusses his experiences with upgrading to the Django NewForms-Admin branch. Great post if you’re considering making the jump.

• Kss in Django – KSS is a javascript framework that aims to allow Ajax development without javascript. It uses stylesheets with CSS-compliant syntax to setup behaviours in the client and a set of well-defined commands that are marshalled back from the server to manipulate the DOM.

• Oh Django Song – Creative Mac OS X snippet.

• Python and Django Setup for Mac OS X Leopard – Exhaustive walkthrough by David A Krauth on setting up Django on Mac OS X.

• Edit Inline Support for Generic Relations – Patrick Altman delivers an article discussing how he implemented edit-inline support for generic relations.

• Django code_swarm – A kick ass-swarm visualizer by Brian Rosner for the Django source code from initial release to today.
  • code_swarm – An experiment in organic software visualization.
  • SQLAlchemy Code Swarm

• The basics of creating a tumblelog with Django – Interesting post by Ryan Berg. Similar projects are Jelly-Roll and SyncR and Django Lifestream.
  • jellyroll
  • django-syncr
  • django-lifestream

• An Interview with Adrian Holovaty – Creator of Django – Another excellent interview by Shabda Raaj.

Tip of the Week (43:49)

Ever need to reorder the fields on your Model Form?

• CookBookNewFormsFieldOrdering – Post by Simon Willison.
• Django Wiki CookBook

class TranslationForm(BookForm):
    translator = forms.CharField(max_length=40)

    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(TranslationForm, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.fields.keyOrder = ['title', 'author', 'translator', 'publisher', 'copyright']

IRC Ad Nauseam (47:10)

Django IRC FAQ

Backwards Incompatible Changes Information

Charlie O’Keefe say, “I’ve gotten into designing restful URL schemes, basically organizing a web app around resources. Learning Django I was frustrated to find that nothing seems to be done this way. Is there any tool that can help with that?”

• django-rest-interface – Google Summer of Code project by Andreas Stuhlmüller.

Thank You! (50:58)

• MacVim
  • Using TextMate with Django – Great TextMate bundle by Paul Bissex.
  • E Text Editor – Cool TextMate clone for Windows. Utilizes TextMate bundles.
  • Using Vim with Django

• BosnoWsgi – Brian Rosner’s Tool for managing WSGI processes
  • Monit – Great Unix System management
  • CherryPy – a pythonic, object-oriented HTTP framework.
  • Hosting a Django Site with Pure Python – Great post by Eric Florenzano.
  • Serving Django via CherryPy

• Bill Gates Retires
  • Bill Gates Unhinged – amazing email from Bill Gates about his frustrations with using Microsoft software.
  • TWiT Podcast
  • Story by Todd Bishop

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

• Michael on Twitter

You have to word your invitations carefully. Depending on which way this goes, I might just cozy up to a nice glass of wine.

In the closing remarks of This Week in Django 26 Brian Rosner pointed out a code swarm visualization created for Python as well as a couple of other open source projects. Well, in typical Brian fashion, he couldn’t leave well enough alone, so he created a wicked cool Django Code-Swarm Visualization. Definitely check this out. Thanks Brian.

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we talk about the Django Software Foundation, some source commits, some cool projects from the community, a Tip of the Week. and a couple IRC items. It’s a packed show.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (55.8 MB, 1:08:08, AAC)

MP3 Edition (46.8 MB, 1:08:08, MP3)

OGG Edition (38.5 MB, 1:08:08, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

SPONSOR: This Week in Django is brought you by Justin Lilly, who according to all historic accounts, once scissor kicked Angela Landsbury. Thank you Justin.

Big News (2:18)

New foundation for Django – Lawrence-Journal World announces new Django foundation and code commits change license ownership.

• Jacob Kaplan-Moss Signing Papers – History in the making.

Tracking Trunk (5:02)

• login view no longer assumes that set_test_cookie has been called. (7692)
  • This is mildly backwards-incompatible, but in the “now it works the way it should have all along” sense.

• Added a—traceback option to syncdb to provide a stack trace when custom SQL loading fails. Also added documentation for the—traceback option (7704)

• Fixed bug with Model.delete() which did not always delete objects in the right order. (7722)

Branching and Merging (9:50)

• Handle multiple e-mail addresses when checking if it was mistakenly entered. Also prevent e-mail guessing by checking password before throwing an error. (7694)

Community Catchup (15:57)

• DebugFooter Redux – Last week we talked about Andreas Marr very cool Django Snippet to add debug information into the footer of each webpage. This week he did it one better based on some suggestions from our program. Now that’s what I call Podcast Driven Development™.
  • django-loggin

• Django Tutorial – Abstract Base Classes vs Model Table Inheritance – Awesome post by Kevin Fricovsky that covers the difference between Abstract Base Classes and Multi-Table Inheritance.

• django_templatecomponents – A django application by Filip Noetzel that makes it easy organize your component source (javascript, css) right in your django templates to to make your website much faster.
  • Git Repository

• group_required Decorator – Matt Dennebaum offers a nice addition to your Django projects that adds the ability to check for authorization of a user against the specified group.

• django-ajax-validation – A reusable application by Alex Gaynor for doing ajax validation with django newforms. It requires jQuery.
  • Git repository also available
  • Ticket 2070 – Streaming file uploading by Mike Axiak.

• Fun with queryset-refactor – Another great post by James Bennett discussing some of the new features that were part of the Queryset-Refactor merge.
  • Practical Django Projects – Forthcoming book by James Bennett.

• Werkzeug Debugger in Django – The Werkzeug debugger has a kick ass AJAX based console option to debug traceback items in the web browser.
  • Changeset 7537
  • Ticket 3527 – Adds Werkzeug to Django directly.

• Let’s talk about documentation – Excellent post by James Bennett on how he approaches documentation for his Django projects.

Tip of the Week (43:22)

This tip comes from Alexander Solovyov in his blog post Render To Improved.

Sometimes you want to return a RequestContext from a view. One way to do that is to specify the response code using a decorator.

@render_to('mytemplate.html')
def myview(request):
  return ({'id': 1, 'name':'empty'})

# example with override
@render_to('mytemplate.html')
def myview(request):
  return ({'name':'empty'}, 'override.html')

# python 2.3 example with override
def myview(request):
  return ({'name':'empty'}, 'override.html')
myview = render_to(myview, 'mytemplate.html')

You can also return a tuple where the second item is a string that overrides the default template specified in render_to.

• Permalink Decorator – “A backwards remapper hulu-hooping dancer, thingy.”—brosner

IRC Ad Nauseam (51:11)

Django IRC FAQ

Backwards Incompatible Changes Information

What’s the difference between Abstract Base Classes and Multi-Table Inheritance?

Abstract Base Classes are where you provide a base class, like Person, and then a derived class like Employee. Django will create a single database table for the Person model that contains the combined fields from both the base and derived classes.

Multi-Table Inheritance also has the base and derived class but at the database level you end up with two tables: one for the base class and one for the derived class, with a one-to-one field added in to connect the two.

Again, we highly recommend the excellent post by Kevin Fricovsky that we mentioned in Community Catchup. Plus, as always, the excellent Django documentation.

• Abstract Base Classes – Django documentation on the subject.

• Multi-Table Inheritance – Django documentation on the subject.

Is there a way to pass the filter arguments as string to the QuerySet?

QuerySet parameters are standard Python keyword arguments, and can use standard keyword argument expansion.

Post.objects.filter(datetime__year=2008)

Post.objects.filter(**{'datetime__year': 2008})

• Dynamic Functions – Excellent post by Marty Alchin that discusses keyword arguments in a very easy to understand way.

Thank You!

• Facestat scales fast for Yahoo traffic
  • Scaling Fast by Lukas Biewald

• Eric Florenzano in Japan – Follow him in his travels. Lots of very cool pictures.

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

• Michael on Twitter

Someone is very creative. I love it!

“What the hell is going on? This is fucking incredible.” Jacob Kaplan-Moss said. Kaplan-Moss is the chief architect of Django and said nothing like this had ever happened before. “They’re all naked, and these chicks don’t shave anything!”

A new feature to come to the Django-Command-Extensions project is the implementation of a new management command called runserver_plus. For now the “plus” part means that I’ve replaced the standard Django traceback pages with the Werkzeug Debugger traceback page in it’s place.

Getting Started

This item requires that you have the Werkzeug WSGI utilities installed, in addition to the django-command-extensions app.

To get started we just use the `runserver_plus` command instead of the normal `runserver` command:

$ python manage.py runserver_plus

 * Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/
 * Restarting with reloader...
Validating models...
0 errors found

Django version 0.97-newforms-admin-SVN-unknown, using settings 'screencasts.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Using the Werkzeug debugger (http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/)
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Note: all normal runserver options apply. In other words, if you need to change the port number or the host information, you can do so like you would normally.

Using

Whenever we hit an exception in our code, instead of the normal Django traceback page appearing, we see the Werkzeug traceback page instead.

Along with the typical traceback information we have a couple of options. These options appear when you hover over a particular traceback line. Notice that two buttons appear to the right:

The options are:

View Source

This displays the source below the traceback:

Being able to view the source file is handy because you are able to get more context information around where the error occurred. The actual traceback areas are highlighted so they are easy to spot.

One awkward piece about this is that the page is not scrolled to the bottom. At first I thought nothing was happening because of this.

Interactive Debugging Console

When you click on this button a new pane will open up below the traceback line you’re on. This is the money shot:

An ajax based console appears in the pane and you can begin debugging away. Notice in the screenshot above I did a print environ to see what was in the environment parameter coming into the function.

Summary

I’ve only been using the Werkzeug debugger on my Django projects for a day now. But I’m loving it. I encourage you to check it out. Plus if you’re not a current Django-Command-Extensions user, you’re going to find tons of really cool additions in there.

WARNING: This should never be used in any kind of production environment. Not even for a quick check into a problem. I cannot emphasize this enough. The interactive debugger allows you to evaluate python code right against the server. You’ve been warned.

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we talk about the Django 1.0 Roadmap, EuroPython Sprint, tons of source commits, great stuff happening in the NewForms-Admin branch, some cool projects from the community, and the Tip of the Week.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (32.4 MB, 55:28, AAC)

MP3 Edition (38.1 MB, 55:28, MP3)

OGG Edition (30.8 MB, 55:28, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Big News (1:37)

• Official Django 1.0 Announcement
  • Version 1.0 Roadmap
  • Original Proposal on Google Groups

EuroPython Django Sprint – We are holding an official Django sprint, July 10th until saturday July 12th, during the EuroPython conference. Join us in the push to 1.0.

Tracking Trunk (9:19)

• Fixed serialization for multi-model inheritance (7600)
  • Serializers were including all superclass fields in their output. Now only local fields are included.
  • Implicit OneToOne? primary keys were not correctly added to the metamodel, so they were always marked to be serialized, even though they were primary
  • Model saving was too aggressive about creating new parent class instances during deserialization. Raw save on a model now skips saving of the parent class.

• Prevent update on sliced queryset (7601) – Update doesn’t reliably support limit and offset.

• Added an --exclude option to dumpdata (7615) – This makes it possible to exclude a particular application from the output.

• Corrected empty QuerySet.values call when combined with extra (7636)

• Abstracted some more database options into DatabaseFeatures (7643) – This makes it easier to control behavior through the database backend.

• Added list_display Admin options to FlatPage (7651)

• Improved fixture error reporting (7653) – It now displays the entire traceback.

Branching and Merging (17:06)

• newforms-admin is now trunk feature compatible.
  • Implemented save_as functionality. This also properly makes inlines work as well. (7603)
  • Implemented max_num on formsets and model formsets. Added a hook on InlineModelAdmin to customize in the admin interface. (7613)
  • Implemented ModelAdmin.radio_fields to match trunk’s radio_admin. (7626)

• Improvements to the ModelAdmin API.
  • Added ability to pass extra_context argument to ModelAdmin’s add_view, change_view, changelist_view, delete_view and history_view methods. (7627)
    • This makes it easier to customise those pages; you can over-ride the methods in your subclass and call the super method with extra_context to feed additional variables to your custom admin templates.
  • Made it easier to specify a custom template to be used in the admin section. (7630)
    • You can now specify index_template and login_template properties on an AdminSite subclass, and change_form_template, change_list_template, object_history_template and delete_confirmation_template properties on a ModelAdmin subclass.

• Formsets API is now finalized. Documentation was committed for formsets. (7606)

• Initial admin documentation is now available (7616) and (7617).
  • Watch for changes to newforms-admin documentation.

Community Catchup (29:58)

• Callcast – Discussion with Eric Florenzano – Nice interview by Kevin Fricovsky with Eric Florenzano. A little raw but enjoyable.

• Django Dash Results – Congratulations to all the participants. Check the results for information on all the winners.
  • 1st Place – Benjamin Pollack and Tyler Hicks-Wright – Their site was a code review site with Mercurial integration.
  • 2nd Place – Eric Florenzano and Tony Hauber – Feedalizer is a syndication feed aggregation based on popular feeds ranked by users.
  • 3rd Place – Justin Lilly and Jannis Leidel – A site connecting developers & translators with rankings for translators and groupings.

• A Better Serialization Framework – A series of interesting posts by fiam on creating what he calls a better serialization framework.
  • Part 1
  • Part 2
  • Part 3

• DebugFooter middleware with Pygments sql syntax highlighting – In a never-ending quest to create the ultimate debug footer, Andreas Marr has created yet another version.
  • django-logging

• js-forms – Jonathan Buchanan has been busy porting newforms to Javascript.

Tip of the Week (41:59)

If you have a template tag that you want to automatically load into context for all of your templates, you can take the same approach Django does with the built-in template tags.

This must be done early on in the load process, so in your __init__.py for the app or project, just do:

from django.template import add_to_builtins
add_to_builtins('template_utils.templatetags.generic_content')

• django-template-utils – James Bennett’s excellent template utilities

Thank You! (44:56)

• FireFox Day 6/17/08 – Download version 3.
  • Firebug Extension – excellent for Javascript debugging.
  • Webkit – Open source rendering engine used in Safari.

• Django-SQLAlchemy
  • SQLAlchemy 0.5

• Code Swarm – Python – amazing swarm representation of Python code commits over years of time. You have to see this!

• Brian Rosner
  • Brian Rosner Blog
  • Brian on Twitter
  • TWiD Live

• Michael on Twitter

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week we talk about a few source commits, a discussion about releases, Some cool projects from the community, and the Tip of the Week.

We liked this one so much we decided to record it twice!

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (42.9 MB, 52:57, AAC)

MP3 Edition (36.4 MB, 52:57, MP3)

OGG Edition (28.3 MB, 52:57, Vorbis)

The Enhanced Podcast version contains screenshots and easy access links to all of the items we discuss throughout the podcast.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available. By subscribing using the iTunes feeds the podcasts will automatically be downloaded for you when we release them.

iTunes Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

Regular RSS Feeds

This Week in Django – AAC Edition

This Week in Django – MP3 Edition

This Week in Django – OGG Edition

Give Us Feedback

Want to give us some feedback on the show? We’re always looking for ideas or suggestions that will help improve each episode. Please contact us at feedback __at__ thisweekindjango.com.

Show Notes

Tracking Trunk (4:05)

• Tightened up ForeignKey and OneToOne field assignment. (7574)
  • Raise a ValueError if you try to assign the wrong type of object.
  • Raise a ValueError if you try to assign None to a field not specified with null=True.
  • Cache the set value at set time instead of just at lookup time.
  • This is a slightly backwards-incompatible change; see BackwardsIncompatibleChanges for more details.

• Allow Meta to be a newstyle class (7585) – This change allows you to use new style classes for the internal Meta class.

• Added get/set_expiry methods to session objects (7586) – you can now set expiry time on sessions objects through the set_expiry method.

• Added ‘manage.py createsuperuser’ (7590) – This has been something that a lot of people have wanted and has been supported in django-command-extensions for some time.
  • Fixed ticket #5614
  • Docs added (7593)
  • Corrected a typo in the backwards-compatibility layer for createsuperuser (7596)
  • Fixed bug with syncdb and createsuperuse (7598)

• Improved error checking when loading fixtures (7595) – this tightens up the potential for problems with fixtures.

Community Catchup (15:58)

• Interview with Jacob Kaplan-Moss – Shabda Raaj of the 42Topics Blog continues his quest to interview interesting people in the Django community. It’s an amazing interview and quite thought provoking.

• About Django and the importance of releases – Interesting post by Christian Joergensen arguing that Django needs to have releases more often. Created a bit of a stir in the community. Follow on discussion occurred in the Django-Developers group.
  • Django-Developers followup discussion

• StaticGenerator for Django Updated – Jared Kuolt adds middleware that allows StaticGenerator to run during normal project usage.

• Django India – Google Group discussion for Django developers in India.

• django-arcade – a Django pluggable app that gets a constantly updating list of flash games and swf files every day that you can include with a template tag into any project you want.
  • Django Arcade Site

• Low-level cache decorators for Django – Great post on using decorators to handle caching within models.

Tip of the Week (44:00)

Onno Timmerman sends us this tip with doing Internationalization.

I needed to give someone a django.po file. Normaly a user wants to edit it with Microsoft Word, even when you ask not to they tend to do it! Poedit is a great program that makes it easy to edit these files.

Poedit

Thank You! (45:39)

Intermediate Models – Ticket 6095 – Worked on by Eric Florenzano

Brian Rosner

• OebFare Blog
• On Twitter

Junk in the Trunk by Campfire Dusty Rootin’ Tootin’ Sing-A-Longs & Campfire Ditties

This Week in Django is a weekly podcast about all things Django.

This week Eric Florenzano fills in while Michael is out. We talk to James Tauber about who he is and what Pinax is. A few trunk changes and some community bits.

Please see the Show Notes below for all the pertinent information and links

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (32.7 MB, 44:47, AAC)

MP3 Edition (41.7 MB, 44:47, MP3)

OGG Edition (53.7 MB, 44:47, Vorbis)</