Empty Thoughts

Just as Malcolm Tredinnick stated on This Week in Django 19, the Queryset-Refactor branch has been merged into trunk. Changeset 7477 makes that happen.

I’m sure there will be plenty of future blog posts talking about some of enhancements / changes that were made, but some of the highlights:

• Ordering has been made consistent with the double-underscore syntax in filtering.
• New update method that can update multiple records database side.
• Addition of reverse method.
• New values_list method that returns a tuple of values. This is a really nice addition.

Plus, tons of bug fixes, lots of reorganization that makes future enhancements much simpler, and lots of other goodness. See the Queryset Refactor Branch page on the wiki for more information.

For a lot of open source projects this type of thing would not have a huge impact, since with most projects the developers are running their code off of released versions. With Django, most developers have been accustomed to running their code, (yes, even production code), off of the trunk. With two very large branches, NewForms-Admin and Queryset-Refactor, it was often a difficult situation in deciding which branch would be the primary code base. For most of my stuff, I benefited more from the changes in Queryset-Refactor, and so I often settled on using that as my “trunk”. With the merge of Queryset Refactor I can shift to using NewForms-Admin (as soon as it merges to trunk), and be able to continue to enjoy all of the good stuff in Queryset Refactor.

An incredible amount thanks goes to Malcolm Tredinnick for all his work on this branch. He has done a tremendous job with the refactoring and enhancing of Django’s querysets.

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

SPECIAL FEATURE – Internationalisation

This is the first part of a two part series on Internationalisation. This week we are privileged to talk to Malcolm Tredinnick, Django core developer. Malcolm educates us on what internationalisation is all about, how it is implemented in Django, and some of the areas that can be improved in the future.

Additionally, we also discuss a lot of changesets in the Queryset Refactor Branch, and a couple of blog posts from the Django community.

It is our longest show yet, but definitely worth your attention. This is a must listen podcast.

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

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Show Notes

Special Feature – Internationalization (1:39)

Malcolm Tredinnick, Django core developer, joins us to discuss internationalisation. Malcolm has often played the role of expert on internationalization / localization issues, speaks several languages, and works closely with the Django translators.

To learn more about Malcolm Tredinnick, be sure to add his blog, Defying Classification, to your RSS feeds and listen to our interview with Malcolm on This Week in Django 13

• Django Documentation on Internationalisation

• What is the difference between internationalisation and localisation?
  • Plural Forms

• Python 3.0 will feature full unicode support. What does that mean for Django? Will there be any benefits?

• I attended a discussion by Tim Bray, who I suppose is a recognized internationalisation expert, and by the end of the discussion I felt like the idea of creating truly internationlised applications is somewhat hopeless. What are your thoughts about this?

• How does translation support appear to the end-user in something like Django? (how they set which language to use, what Django does, etc).

• Justin Lilly, a Django user and rabid fan of the show, wanted to ask, “I’m curious how many different ways there are to declare gettext-like things.. ugettext, gettext, (as a commonly used alias).. any more I don’t know?” So what about it? What’s the differences?

• What is the difference between unicode and utf-8? Is there a difference?

• What sort of things do developers need to watch out for when writing code for an international audience?

• What are some areas where Django’s support is a little weak and can be improved?
  • The Babel Project
  • Django {% blocktrans %} Template Tag
  • There’s an internationalization component in Trac

• What can we do to improve the support in third-party applications for Internationalisation?
  • People learn differently so maybe we need to explore as many ways as possible to educate people. We can use things like tutorials or screencasts.
  • are internationalised.

• Goal is to get Django to pass the Turkey test yet, but it’s a goal.

• How do you handle sorting in Django?

Tracking Trunk (59:37)

• Updated Markdown Filter to Support v1.7 (7423) – From the mailing list, “Additionally, the encoding argument has been removed from both markdown and Markdown. Markdown expects unicode (or ascii) input and it is the users responsibility to ensure that’s what is provided. Therefore, all output is in unicode. Only markdownFromFile accepts an encoding.”

Branching & Merging (1:01:57)

• QuerySet is no longer customizable (7426) – The backends need to override the Query class instead.

• Detect infinite loop in ordering self (7429)

• Added way to specify related names when using Abstract Base Classes (7432) – From the docs, “To work around this problem, when you are using related_name in an abstract base class (only), part of the name should be the string '%(class)s'. This is replaced by the lower-cased name of the child class that the field is used in.”

• Internal optimizations in the Insert and Update methods (7437) – used for internal methods within Django.

Community Catchup (1:24:12)

• Django question of the day: two apps, relating them – Great post by Clint Ecker asking how people handle two apps that need to have dependencies on them.

• The limits of Django – Interesting post by Alberto García Hierro where he discusses the process he used to optimize queries. His final solution ended up being a C library. The post received tons of interest and he provided a followup, The limits of Django: the answers, where he addresses some of the questions he received.

• DjangoSites.org gets OpenID support.

Thank You! (1:38:43)

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

This week we are privileged to have Malcolm Tredinnick, Django core developer, on the show to talk to us about working on Django, the Queryset Refactor branch, and some of his writing. We also discuss a few source commits, some cool projects from the community, and the Win Cool Stuff Contest.

You don’t want to miss this one!

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

Downloads

AAC Enhanced Podcast (55.2 MB, 01:09:07, AAC)

MP3 Edition (47.5 MB, 01:09:07, MP3)

OGG Edition (37.7 MB, 01:09:07, 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

Django Interview – Malcolm Tredinnick (0:34)

• Malcolm Tredinnick on Django People.
• Defying Classification Blog – Be sure to put Malcolm’s blog in your feed reader. Lots of excellent insight and humorous writing.

• Gnome Project
• Simon Willison’s Weblog

• Distributed Version Control Systems
  • Git Distributed Version Control
  • Mercurial Distributed Version Control
  • Koz Speaks On Git

• Queryset Refactor Branch
  • GeoDjango Branch
  • Defer Ticket (5420) – allows deferring the loading of data on expensive fields.
  • SqlAlchemy – Python ORM.

• Speaking and Writing
  • Preparing For The Next Django Sprint – excellent post describing how best to prepare for a Django sprint.
  • linux.conf.au – annual linux conference in Australia.
  • Malcolm’s Slides from LCA Presentations

Tracking Trunk (39:53)

• Decorators take the name, attributes, and docstring of the function they decorate (7153) – Note, this change is backwards incompatible if, for some reason, you were relying on the name of a Django decorator instead of the function it decorates.
• Lazy related objects supported (7158) – Now, in addition to ForeignKey("Model") you can also say ForeignKey("app.Model"). This means that cross-app recursive relations now work.
• sys.exit() will no longer get swallow by http handler (7168) – a sys.exit() in the view code will now actually exit by raising. Allow customization of language cookie name (7185) – Adds new setting LANGUAGE_COOKIE_NAME that is the name of the cookie to use for the language cookie. This can be whatever you want (but should be different from SESSION_COOKIE_NAME).
• Custom labels for choices in ModelChoiceField (4620)

Community Catchup (54:33)

• Win Cool Stuff Contest – Submit a Tip of the Week or an IRC Ad Nauseam item, including question and answer and we will enter your name into our drawing to win one of our two cool prizes. See the post for full details:
  • The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right. The “Django Book”. A must read for every Django developer. Graciously provided by Apress.
  • Django T-Shirt – a very cool t-shirt with the Django logo on it. Provided by Eminent Consulting Group.

• Why ‘Where Everyone Goes’ Crashed – very interesting post about scaling a large Django site.
  • MintCache Snippet
• Managers Versus Class Methods – another great post by James Bennett. Wondering which to use, read on.
• a cool project by Jannis Leidel that implements a jabber bot for pownce implemented as a Django app. Discussed in this blog post

Thank You! (1:06:38)