FeaturedDjango 1.6 Beta 1 ReleasedThat was quick! Just four months after the release of 1.5, 1.6 is getting ready to spread it's wings. Big new features include persistent database connections (likely a nice speed improvement for many sites), better database transaction management, and a new and more Pythonic test runner. Django Round-up (podcast edition)Fellow Lincoln Loopers, Brandon Konkle and Kenneth Love started up a Django podcast while we were away. They already have three episodes in the can with guests including Daniel Greenfeld, Katie Cunningham, and Justin Abrams. A Thousand Papercuts
Andrew Godwin's latest in his Django database migrations epic. He's getting close to the point where he can merge his work into core and details the level of effort necessary to deprecate
Django adopts a Code of ConductAlex Gaynor and Jacob Kaplan-Moss spearheaded an effort to draft and adopt a Code of Conduct for participating in the Django community. The FAQ explains the reasoning behind the effort well: If you're familiar with the Django community, you'll probably notice that the Code basically matches what we already do. Think of this as documentation: we're taking implicit expectations about behavior and making them explicit. Important Dates
Links of InterestGoDjangoA nice set of short (5-10 minutes) informative screencasts on Django-related topics. Great for both beginners and those looking to level-up. EuroPython Talk VideosLots of great Django talks from this year's EuroPython in Florence. I haven't had a chance to watch them yet, but Going beyond the Django ORM limitations with Postgres and Designing a Real Time Control System based on Django, ZMQ and WebSockets , and Deployability of Python Web Applications are on my list. Deploying Django using Docker
Docker
is a new project that aims to make it easy to build lightweight Linux containers (think something between a
How I Learnt enough Python/Django to be Dangerous in 1 MonthA self-proclaimed product guy's journey into Django. He outlines the steps he took week-by-week. If you're still a Django lurker (or know somebody who is), check out this post. Factory Boy as an Alternative to Django Testing FixturesNobody like database fixtures. They're fragile and problematic, but it's tough to test your applications without any data at all. Factory Boy is a Python port of the popular Ruby library, Factory Girl. This post shows you how to use the package on your Django project. My experiences with Django and Python 3Python 3 is upon us and a few early adopters are starting to deploy production Django sites on it. In this post, Daniel Greenfeld describes a few of the hurdles he encountered trying to work on a Python 3 site and some tips on how to check and update libraries for Python 3 compatibility. Python Web Development: Understanding Django for BeginnersThere are so many great learning materials for Django popping up across the internet. Here is a free hour-long course courtesy of Marakana . One of Microsoft's Best-Kept Secrets - Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS)Microsoft isn't a name you hear frequently in the Django community, but apparently their de-facto IDE, Visual Studio, has pretty great Python (and Django) support. From the article, "This is debugging, remote debugging, cross language debugging, tool tips, watches, locals, call stacks, unit testing, full REPL with inline graphics, profiling, cloud publish, best of class CPython support, and so much more." WebFaction Django ScreencastBack before Heroku and all the other PaaS providers, WebFaction was (and still is) the place for Django shared hosting. If you haven't given their platform a look before, check out this screencast. Here's our affiliate link if you want to sign up for an account and support the Round-up at the same time. A script to quickly access the source of installed python packages
Here's a super-handy little script that will let you easily jump to the source folder for any package installed in your virtualenv. Helpful if you're troubleshooting third-party libraries installed via
Django Project ChecklistA developer's checklist to assess the health and status of an existing Django site. A good list to follow if you believe in coding for the maintainer , "Always code as if the person who ends up maintaining your code is a violent psychopath who knows where you live." Web API Performance: Profiling Django REST FrameworkA great post by Tom Christie, creator of Django REST Framework, taking head-on the misconception that "smaller means faster" when it comes to web frameworks. He performs a series of micro-benchmarks to see where the real bottlenecks are (hint: it's not in the code). New & Updated Packagesdj-staticEasily serve your static assets in production via your existing WSGI server. django-nudgeSelectively push content from one Django server to another (a public domain work of the US Government). mixerGenerate instances of Django or SQLAlchemy models for testing and fixtures replacement. django-oauth-toolkitOauth2 for your Django project. django-pushPubSubHubbub support for Django. wdb
A web-based code debugger (think
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Django Round-Up #14
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