Django community: Community blog posts RSS
This page, updated regularly, aggregates Community blog posts from the Django community.
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HOWTO: Working with Python, Unicode, and Arabic
When working with non-European languages such as Arabic and Chinese, a practical understanding of Unicode is necessary. My research group uses Java for larger applications, and although Java represents all strings in Unicode, it is often cumbersome to write small Java applications for the various data manipulation tasks that appear while preparing corpora for translation. Therefore, fluency in one of the dynamically-typed scripting languages can be immensely useful in this particular domain. I prefer Python for its intuitive Unicode support and minimalist syntax. This article provides sample Python code for several common use cases that require particular consideration of string encodings. Perl offers analogous capabilities, but Ruby’s Unicode support is somewhat limited as of Ruby 1.9. (Note that this document is valid for Python 2.5.x only; Python3k introduces numerous incompatibilities.) Working with Strings Python supports two methods of constructing Unicode strings. The unicode() built-in function constructs a string with a default encoding of utf-8. The u” shorthand notation is equivalent: best = unicode('?????', encoding='utf-8') #Preferred method old = u'?????' #Deprecated in Python3k To convert between one encoding and another, use the string method encode(): ascii_string = 'My anglo-centric string...' utf8_string = ascii_string.encode('utf-8') #Concatenation works as expected utf8_string = utf8_string + … -
How Django URLs work with Regular Expressions
Let's better understand Django... -
Two new projects
Django and security are two of my favorite topics, and I think they go pretty well together. I’ve given a number of conference talks and tutorials on the theme of Django and security, and I’m one of the people on the receiving end of Django’s security-reporting email address. But although I spend a lot of time thinking about security, and trying to improve the state of the world through code, and occasionally ranting on various ... Read full entry -
Building Modern Applications with Django, Vue.js and Auth0: Part 2
This tutorial series are first created for Auth0 blog. Part 2 and 3 will be published in my blog with the permission from the Auth0. As of part 1 you can read it in the Auth0 blog once it's published. In this tutorial you will learn What is Webpack and why you should use it? The Webpack template used by the Vue CLI to generate Vue applications based on Webpack how to integrate Vue with Django so you can serve the front end application using Django instead of having complete separate front end and back end apps how to fix Hot Code Reloading when using Django to serve the Vue application how to update the Callback URL for Auth0 authentication Introduction to Webpack In this section we you briefly get introduced to Webpack (and why you should use Webpack?) Essentially webpack is a static module bundler for modern JavaScript applications which becomes a fundamental tool with the rise of modern JavaScript front end frameworks such as Angular, React and Vue. It also can be easily configured to bundle other assets such as HTML, CSS and images via loaders. It will help you reduce the number of requests and round trips … -
Building a Modern Web Application with Django REST Framework and Vue: Building Views and REST API
Throughout this part of these tutorial series you will continue developing a CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) application with a restful API back-end and a Vue front-end using Django, Django REST framework and Vue (with Axios as an HTTP client). In this part you'll specifically build the REST API and the front-end views to consume and display data from the API endpoints. You will also see how to integrate your Vue application with your Django back-end in production. As always you can find the source code of the demo project in this Github repository. You can check the second article from this link Summary This article is composed of the following sections: Building the REST API: You will create a simple REST API around one model (Product) with DRF and learn how to add pagination to your APIs. Creating the Service to Consume the API: You will create the class that interfaces with your API using Axios. Creating the Front End Views: You will create different views and routes for the Vue application and see how you can protect some routes from non authenticated users. Getting Ready for Production: Finally you'll prepare your app for production by tweaking some … -
Building Modern Applications with Django, Vue.js and Auth0: Part 1
I originally created this tutorial series for Auth0 blog and are published here with the permission from the technical author at Auth0 Throughout this series, you'll be using Django, Django REST framework, and Vue.js to develop an application with a REST API back-end and a Vue.js front-end. The API will be consumed by the Vue.js front-end with the help of the Axios client library and JWT authentication will be handled by Auth0. You are going to start by installing all the project's requirements, then you will bootstrap the Django and the Vue.js sub-projects. You can find the final source code of the demo project that you will create in this GitHub repository. Summary This article is composed of the following sections: Introduction to Python and Django Introduction to Vue.js and Vue.js Features Bootstrapping the Back-End Project Bootstrapping the Front-End Project Introduction to JSON Web Tokens Integrating Django with Auth0 Integrating Auth0 with Vue.js Conclusion and Next Steps Introduction to Python and Django Python is a general-purpose programming language and it's among the most popular programming languages in the world. It's readable, efficient, and easy to learn. Python is also a portable language available for major operating systems such as Linux, … -
Building a Modern Web Application with Django REST Framework and Vue: Building Views and REST API
Throughout this part of these tutorial series you will continue developing a CRUD (Create, Read, Update and Delete) application with a restful API back-end and a Vue front-end using Django, Django REST framework and Vue (with Axios as an HTTP client). In this part you'll specifically build the REST API and the front-end views to consume and display data from the API endpoints. You will also see how to integrate your Vue application with your Django back-end in production. As always you can find the source code of the demo project in this Github repository. You can check the second article from this link Summary This article is composed of the following sections: Building the REST API: You will create a simple REST API around one model (Product) with DRF and learn how to add pagination to your APIs. Creating the Service to Consume the API: You will create the class that interfaces with your API using Axios. Creating the Front End Views: You will create different views and routes for the Vue application and see how you can protect some routes from non authenticated users. Getting Ready for Production: Finally you'll prepare your app for production by tweaking some … -
Django REST Framework Read & Write Serializers
Django REST Framework (DRF) is a terrific tool for creating very flexible REST APIs. It has a lot of built-in features like pagination, search, filters, throttling, and many other things developers usually don't like to worry about. And it also lets you easily customize everything so you can make your API work the way you want. There are many gene -
csso and django-pipeline
This is a quick-and-dirty how-to on how to use csso to handle the minification/compression of CSS in django-pipeline. First create a file called compressors.py somewhere in your project. Make it something like this: import subprocess from pipeline.compressors import CompressorBase from django.conf import settings class CSSOCompressor(CompressorBase): def compress_css(self, css): proc = subprocess.Popen( [ settings.PIPELINE['CSSO_BINARY'], '--restructure-off' ], stdin=subprocess.PIPE, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, ) css_out = proc.communicate( input=css.encode('utf-8') )[0].decode('utf-8') # was_size = len(css) # new_size = len(css_out) # print('FROM {} to {} Saved {} ({!r})'.format( # was_size, # new_size, # was_size - new_size, # css_out[:50] # )) return css_out In your settings.py where you configure django-pipeline make it something like this: PIPELINE = { 'STYLESHEETS': PIPELINE_CSS, 'JAVASCRIPT': PIPELINE_JS, # These two important lines. 'CSSO_BINARY': path('node_modules/.bin/csso'), # Adjust the dotted path name to where you put your compressors.py 'CSS_COMPRESSOR': 'peterbecom.compressors.CSSOCompressor', 'JS_COMPRESSOR': ... Next, install csso-cli in your project root (where you have the package.json). It's a bit confusing. The main package is called csso but to have a command line app you need to install csso-cli and when that's been installed you'll have a command line app called csso. $ yarn add csso-cli or $ npm i --save csso-cli Check that it installed: $ ./node_modules/.bin/csso --version 3.5.0 … -
How to add Wagtail page programmatically via Python script
Given: Two Wagtail CMS page classes: class Section(Page): subtitle = models.Charfield(max_length=128) class News(Page): content = models.Textfield() Task: Using a python script, add a News page item under the Section page titled "Latest news." Solution: 1) Get parent page instance: parent_page = Page.objects.get(title='Latest news' ... Read now -
Basics of Django Rest Framework
What Is Django Rest Framework? Django Rest Framework (DRF) is a library which works with standard Django models to build a flexible and powerful API for your project. Basic Architecture A DRF API is composed of 3 layers: the serializer, the viewset, and the router. Serializer: converts the information stored in the database and defined by the Django models into a format which is more easily transmitted via an API Viewset: defines the functions (read, create, update, delete) which will be available via the API Router: defines the URLs which will provide access to each viewset Serializers Django models intuitively represent data stored in your database, but an API will need to transmit information in a less complex structure. While your data will be represented as instances of your Model classes in your Python code, it needs to be translated into a format like JSON in order to be communicated over an API. The DRF serializer handles this translation. When a user submits information (such as creating a new instance) through the API, the serializer takes the data, validates it, and converts it into something Django can slot into a Model instance. Similarly, when a user accesses information via the … -
Container Runtimes Part 2: Anatomy of a Low-Level Container Runtime
This is the second in a four-part series on container runtimes. In part 1, I gave an overview of container runtimes and discussed the differences between low-level and high-level runtimes. In this post I will go into detail on low- level container runtimes. Low-level runtimes have a limited feature set and typically perform the low- level tasks for running a container. Most developers shouldn't use them for their day-to-day work. Low-level runtimes are usually implemented as simple tools or libraries that developers of higher level runtimes and tools can use for the low-level features. W[...] -
Container Runtimes Part 2: Anatomy of a Low-Level Container Runtime
This is the second in a four-part series on container runtimes. In part 1, I gave an overview of container runtimes and discussed the differences between low-level and high-level runtimes. In this post I will go into detail on low- level container runtimes. Low-level runtimes have a limited feature set and typically perform the low- level tasks for running a container. Most developers shouldn't use them for their day-to-day work. Low-level runtimes are usually implemented as simple tools or libraries that developers of higher level runtimes and tools can use for the low-level features. W[...] -
Synchronizing Django model definitions
This is about a small problem we faced with the models used for customers in YPlan, now Time Out Checkout. Customers are stored in two models: Customer for active customers, and RemovedCustomer for inactive customers. When a customer closes their account, a subset of the fields are copied to RemovedCustomer, to comply with data retention policies, and then the original Customer is wiped. The two models are defined something like this: class Customer(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=128, blank=True) email = models.CharField(max_length=128, null=True, unique=True) # etc. class RemovedCustomer(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=128, blank=True) email = models.CharField(max_length=128, null=True) # etc. name and email are two of the fields copied on closure - they’re nearly identical, except RemovedCustomer.email is not unique, because the same email address could be used for multiple accounts that get removed one after another. The problem we faced was keeping the definitions of these fields synchronized, differences like unique asides. Initially the two model classes were declared in the usual way, as above, with the field definitions copy-pasted. This meant that changes to one model needed copying to the other. Unfortunately this got forgotten when a field on Customer had its max_length extended, so it wasn’t copied to RemovedCustomer, and the … -
Raspberry Pi Awesome // Install Scripts for Python 3, OpenCV, Dli & Others
I've found setting up my Raspb... -
On Django's longevity
“Django is about to be a teenager.” I don’t remember exactly who said that, but it came up in a discussion of potential followup events to 2015’s “Django Birthday”, held in Lawrence, Kansas, to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Django’s initial public release. There might still be some parties to throw — maybe a Django sweet sixteen — but regardless of what the future holds, the summer of 2018 will mark thirteen years since ... Read full entry -
Raspberry Pi Network Server Guide with Django & SSH
In this post, we'll be setting... -
OpenCV & Python // Web Camera Quick Test
This post assumes you have eit... -
Install OpenCV 3 for Python on Windows
OpenCV, aka Open Computer Visi... -
My Python Development Environment, 2018 Edition
This is out of date. For a newer version, see My Python Development Environment, 2020 Edition For years I’ve noodled around with various setups for a Python development environment, and never really found something I loved – until now. My setup pieces together pyenv, pipenv, and pipsi. It’s probably a tad more complex that is ideal for most Python users, but for the things I need, it’s perfect. My Requirements I do have somewhat specific (maybe unusual? -
Django development with Docker —A completed development cycle
After finishing the last post about Django development with Docker, we got a host-isolated development environment, which allows us to encapsulate our application and dependencies. Let’s review some tips and improvements for our environment.IntroductionUsually on our development environment, we can access to the local database, install different requirements, reload the running server on code changes, use different settings or running different commands. If we cannot do that, our development cycle could be slow and tedious.In order to solve that, we need to implement these features:Accessing the containers database (Using ports )Installing different requirements or using different settings (Using ARG and ENV )Reloading the running server on code changes (Using volumes)Accessing the database(Thanks Dilip Maharjan for inspiring this part)From our last post, this is our configuration. Our database service definition in compose looks like:https://medium.com/media/35df038b3b4523db615116fe32f5fca4/hrefAnd our Django settings looks like:https://medium.com/media/a86b17b1eb6442fa8f29b23b4e0aed22/hrefFrom time to time, you might want to access the database directly, but we cannot access to the database container directly from outside the django container.The Django application inside the container can access to the database container because they are in the same network and Docker has a feature called “automatic service discovery”, which resolves “db” to an IP of that network. Read … -
Continuous Integration and Deployment with Drone, Docker, Django, Gunicorn and Nginx - Part 3
The Introduction This is the third and final part of a multi-part tutorial covering a simple(ish) setup of a continuous integration/deployment pipeline using Drone.io:0.5. Since Part 2, Drone.io:0.8 has become available. This new version boasts much better documentation and is comparably much easier to set up than Drone.io:0.5 and even outlines how to set up your server behind NGINX. In parts 1 and 2 of this series we: Set up our Drone server Added a .drone.yml to our Django application and configured it to tell Drone to run our application’s test suite Added a condition on our master branch to only allow passed build to be merged Added a publish step to our .drone.yml to be triggered on merges to publish an updated version of our application’s code to Dockerhub Created a systemd service to manage our application’s Docker container on our EC2 instance Created a deploy.sh script on our EC2 instance that stops and removes our app’s Docker container, pulls an updated image for the container from Dockerhub and then restarts the systemd service managing the container. Lastly, we added a deploy step to our .drone.yml to ssh into our EC2 container and run the deploy.sh script. The last … -
How to Hide And Auto-populate Title Field of a Page in Wagtail CMS
Given from django.db import models from wagtail.wagtailsnippets.models import register_snippet class CountryPage(Page): country = models.ForeignKey('Country', blank=False, null=True, unique=True) class Country(models.Model): name = models.CharField(max_length=128) Task I want to have the title field of my CountryPage to be auto-populated with a ... Read now -
Django Single Sign On(SSO) to multiple applications
Single sign on is a way for users to issue a security token for the first time login, login into multiple applications using one set of credentials i.e security token. Adding sso to an application will make things easier for users, because they dont need to remember login credentials for multiple applications. User just need to enter their login credentials for first time instead of re-entering their credentials for every application login. In this post, we'll see how to add single sign on to multiple django applications using django-simple-sso. Using django-simple-sso, we should have single server, multiple clients. 1. Server will have all users information which'll authenticate user details at the time of login, creates token for the first time. Using their security tokens, it'll authenticates user details 2. Each Client or application needs to generate their public key, private key in the server to perform requests securely. How Django SSO works for multiple applications? User --> application -- > SSO Server --> application 1. When User log into an application, the client will send a request with next GET parameter, which have redirect url after successful login 2. Request details(application details: public key, private key, redirect url) will be … -
Add Value To Your Django Project With An API
How do your users interact with your web app? Do you have users who are requesting new features? Are there more good feature requests than you have developer hours to build? Often, a small addition to your app can open the door to let users build features they want (within limits) without using more of your own developers’ time, and you can still keep control over how data can be accessed or changed. That small addition is called an application programming interface, or API. APIs are used across the web, but if you aren’t a developer, you may not have heard of them. They can be easily built on top of Django projects, though, and can provide great value to your own developers as well as to your users. What Is An API? At its core, an API is essentially an interface which allows two pieces of software to talk to each other. This usually refers to a request that reaches across the web to a third-party service, although it can also be used to allow two of your own apps to talk to each other. Why Would I Want One? As a user, there are many reasons you might …