Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging Book Review

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

I just finished reading the copy of Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging by Karen M. Tracey provided to us for review by Packt Publishing. For those of you who don’t know, Karen is a core developer of Django and her knowledge and experience in the framework shines through in this book.

This is a great book for people who want to transition from being a hobbyist tinkering on Django sites to professional developers. It will be a lot to digest for a newcomer to Django and might not contain much new information if you’ve been working with Django for a while (and writing tests for your code). The book covers:

  • doctests vs. unit tests
  • integrating external tools like Nose, Coverage, and Twill
  • debugging with logging, Django Debug Toolbar, and pdb
  • how to get help from the Django community and file bugs
  • troubleshooting Apache/mod_wsgi deployments

Even though I’ve been working with Django for a few years now, I still picked up some great tips and got a few nice refreshers after reading the book. In Chapter 5, Karen describes how to use Twill instead of the built-in test client. As somebody who has written tests for multi-page form wizards with an automatically generated hash, I wish I had thought of this technique at the time. By using Twill, you can ignore auto-filled form fields and just test the functionality you care about.

Another great thing about this book are the non-trivial code samples included. I love reading other people’s code. You can learn a lot by seeing how other people solve problems and their general coding style. One item that struck me was the use of reverse(admin:[url_name]) in some of the examples. I had missed the addition of URL namespaces in Django 1.1 and will definitely be integrating them into my code in the future.

If you don’t have much experience with testing or real debugging (not sprinkling print statements) and are looking to make the leap to professional development with Django, I strongly recommend grabbing a copy of this book. You’ll learn a lot and it will make a great reference manual for your bookshelf.

Comments

  • June 17, 2010 at 3:12 a.m. #
    memo chimed in with:

    Never used twill before. I guess it could be quite handy in the automated testing process. As well as the URL technique.

Got something to say?





About Lincoln Loop | Our Team | Portfolio

This was written on June, 16 2010 and is filed in django, review.

Our Products

Gondola
Gondola is a hosted CMS that gives designers a powerful and easy platform to create amazing geo-enabled Websites.
Trailmapping
Still in development, Trailmapping is a GPS enabled trail guide and trip logger.

Categories

Archives

Elsewhere

What we’ve been up to online

Interested in working with us?
Fill out the form below or contact us at:

PO Box 774441
Steamboat Springs, CO
80477

ph: 970.879.8810
fx:  970.367.8596
info@lincolnloop.com