This Week in Django 33

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

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

Special Thanks to Justin Lilly for helping get this show produced.

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

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AAC Enhanced Podcast (75.2 MB, 1:32:42, AAC)

MP3 Edition (63.7 MB, 1:32:42, MP3)

OGG Edition (50.2 MB, 1:32:42, 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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Show Notes

Big News (1:01)

• *NEW** This Week in Django site. This will be a work in progress. We’re just getting it out there now but have some very cool plans in the months to come.

• Django 1.0 Alpha 2
  • Django Weblog Entry
  • Release Notes

• Django 1.0 Beta 1 – currently scheduled for August 14
  • Release candidate sprint in Austin, TX on August 15 and via IRC in #django-sprint.

Tracking Trunk (10:26)

• Removed dictionary access to HttpRequest (8202)
  • Backward incompatible Change Information

• url tag now allows NoReverseMatch exceptions to propagate (8211)
  • Backward incompatible Change Information

• Merged GIS into trunk (8219)
  • First baby-steps in GeoDjango – great post by Horst Gutmann.

• Signal/dispatch refactoring (8223)
  • Backwards Incompatible Change Information

• Modified the custom command loader to allow for explicit specification of the project name, even if the project directory isn’t in the python path. (8227)

• Allow alternate file extensions on files that are translated. (8234)

• File storage refactoring (8244)
  • Backwards Incompatible Change Information
  • django-storages – Generic storages for Django by David Larlet.

• Split CacheMiddleware up into two parts (8260) – There is now an update-cache and a fetch-from-cache middleware item.

• Moved admindoc templates into admindoc/templates (8264) – slightly backwards incompatible change in that you now need add ‘django.contrib.admindocs’ to INSTALLED_APPS.

• Added the ability to force an insert or an update through save (8267)

• Adjusted the ModelAdmin API to allow the created/updated objects
  to be passed to the formsets prior to validation. (8273)
  • Backwards Incompatible Change Information
  • (8266) – Originally added save_model and save_formset. save_model was renamed to save_form in this change.

• Added support for inline generic relations (8279)

• UserAdmin can now be seamless replaced.
  • Changeset (8280)
  • Changeset (8283)

• Remove all the remaining, deprecated, non-oldforms features (8291) – See the changeset for the full list of removed items.

Community Catchup (51:57)

• Default Templates in Django – Jeff Croft writes an excellent post describing the “fallback” system used for locating templates. When used wisely, it can allow for a situation in which you can literally design an entire site by creating only one HTML file.
  • Extending templates – Simon Willison created a wiki post that details the ability to provide an over-ride template that also extends itself.

• django-tables – Pretty amazing utility by Michael Elsdoerfer that allows you to handle tables in your templates much the same way as you handles forms and ModelForms.

• Pickled Object Field – A snippet that adds a field which can store any pickleable object in the database. Automatically handles pickling and unpickling.
  • Custom Fields in Django David Cramer posts two new custom fields – SerializedDataField and SeparatedValuesField, the first being very similar to the Pickled Object Field and it allows you to store raw data, such as a dictionary, or a list of items, or more complex objects and the latter is an alternative to the CommaSeparatedIntegerField, it allows you to store any separated values. You can also optionally specify a token parameter.

• South – Andrew Godwin adds intelligent database migrations for Django. Currently supports PostgreSQL and MySQL.

• Best Practices: file and folder names in Django projects and Apps – A nice tutorial on how you should lay out your django apps, translated from German using Google Translation.
  • Here’s the original post
  • django-extensions
  • A Kinder Gentler Django

• django: adding * to every required field – Interesting approach that basically monkey patches the BoundField to add in asterisks to every required field.

• Callcast – Discussion with Jeff Croft
  • Jeff Croft start his own callcast series, check out this first callcast with Matt Brown where they talk design, freelance techniques, and peer review.

• A Syntax Coloring Template Filter for Django Another excellent post from Will Larson; here Larson details a nice template filter solution for auto-generating syntax highlighting for your code snippets. He leverages the popular Pygments project to make everything look nice and pretty.

Thank You! (1:25:10)

• Readernaut
• Practical Django Projects
• Jinja2
• Mako

• 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

• Running Time: 1:32:42