Empty Thoughts

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

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

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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.

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This Week in Django – AAC Edition

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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!”