01 Nov 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Django News - Django Girls Turns 10 - Nov 1st 2024
News
2025 DSF Board Candidates
There are 21 individuals who have chosen to stand for election, and here is a complete list including their candidate statements.
Voting closes on November 15, 2024, at 23:59 Anywhere on Earth.
Django Girls Blog - It's our 10th birthday!
Django Girls has turned 10! We're so proud to reach this momentous milestone and of everything the community has achieved!
During the past decade, 2467 volunteers in 109 countries have run 1137 free workshops. More than 24,500 women in 593 cities have attended our events, and for many of them, Django Girls was their first step towards a career in tech.
The results speak for themselves.
Octoverse: AI leads Python to top language as the number of global developers surges
In this year's Octoverse report, Python overtook JavaScript as the most popular language on GitHub.
PSF Fellow Nominations Q4 Due Date
PSF Fellow nominations for Q4 2024 are open until November 20th-nominate someone whose contributions to the Python community deserve recognition.
Updates to Django
Today's 'Updates to Django' is presented by Abigail Afi Gbadago from Djangonaut Space!
Last week we had 21 pull requests merged into Django by 15 different contributors - including 5 first-time contributors! 🎉
Congratulations to Karol Alvarado, Abigail Afi Gbadago 🚀 , amirreza sohrabi far, Emme Bravo 🚀, Sarah Sanger🚀 and tainarapalmeira 🚀 for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board! ⛵
Coming in Django 5.2
- Support has been for MBRCoveredBy, ST_GeoHash, ST_IsValid, ST_Collect in MariaDB 11.7
- Support has been added for GDAL curved geometries in GeoDjango. Special thanks for the long work on this PR 🥳
Django Newsletter
Sponsored Link 1
A book about Django's asynchronous capabilities and the async protocols of the web such as WebSockets, Server Sent Events, Long Polling, GraphQL Subscriptions, Streaming, etc.
Articles
How to Keep Up with Django
Part 20 of Eric Matthes's excellent series focuses on staying informed about Django code and community.
Should you use uv's managed Python in production?
The uv package manager can also install Python for you. Should you use this feature in production?
Improving the New Django Developer Experience
The author of the new package, dj-beat-drop, expands on his DjangoCon US lightning talk about improving the experience for new Django developers.
Start Coding Now - Empty Image Fields in Django
A short and sweet tip about Django's FileField and ImageFields.
Django Commons
Django Commons is a new project similar (but with significant differences) to the long-standing Django Jazzband organization.
Django TemplateYaks
Emma explores a new approach to Django template tags by introducing class-based tags for easier reusability and customization, making complex template tag creation more manageable.
Customize SaaS Apps with Django Tenant
Customize form options for multi-tenant SaaS apps with the new django-tenant-options package, which enables standardized, flexible forms across tenants while preserving data integrity and consistency.
Videos
Modern web apps with (almost) no JavaScript: Enhancing user experience with HTMX in Django
Learn how to significantly enhance user experience with HTMX, covering practical examples like click-to-edit interfaces, infinite scrolling, and real-time search, demonstrating how HTMX can simplify development and improve performance.
Building a Data Harmonization Engine on top of Django - The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly
The story of Data Hub, a research project in epidemiology that integrated data processing pipelines in Django, fought with the documentation to build, deployed, and tried to make reusable for use-cases in other domains.
Manage.py as the task runner
In this talk, we go through how to create, extend and replace existing management commands. We see how to use other programs from manage.py, setup proxy connections and integrate secrets.
Sponsored Link 2
YOUR AD HERE
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Podcasts
Ep169: Python Core Developer - Mariatta Wijaya
Mariatta is a Python Core Team member, Python podcaster, and former PyCon Chair. We discuss her work with Python over the years, using Django in her day job, and her new consultancy, CMD Limes.
Django News Jobs
Software Engineer (Python) - Fully remote at Bidnamic 🆕
Full Stack Python Developer at TeraLumen Solutions Pvt Ltd
Senior Python Engineer at Kazang a company part of the Lesaka Technologies Group
Chief Technology Officer at Torchbox
Software Engineer, Archiving & Data Services (Remote) at Internet Archive
Django Developer -- Data Science & Algo Focus | Remote at Spotter AI
Full-stack Python Developer at Scalable Path
Documentation platform engineer at Canonical
Django Newsletter
Projects
sjbitcode/django-admin-dracula
🦇 Dracula theme for the Django admin. (Jeff's favorite theme)
epicserve/dj-beat-drop
A CLI for creating new Django projects.
Sponsorship
🌟 Sponsor Django News
Would you and your company be interested in reaching over 4,000 active Django developers? We have the Fall sponsorship inventory available.
Please find out more on our sponsorship page.
Thank you for being a part of our community and supporting Django News!
This RSS feed is published on https://django-news.com/. You can also subscribe via email.
01 Nov 2024 3:00pm GMT
30 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Python Core Developer - Mariatta Wijaya
- Mariatta's personal site
- Mariatta on GitHub, Fosstodon, Instagram, and LinkedIn
- GitHub stories
- Hidden Figures of Python podcast
- CMDLines
- Python discussion forum
Sponsor
30 Oct 2024 4:00pm GMT
29 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Empty Image Fields in Django
tl;dr
Django FileFields and ImageFields are stored as strings in your database. Don't use null=True with them, instead use blank=True and filter by .filter(image__exact="").
Discovering a Bug
I ran into a bug where I was trying to filter a QuerySet by image__isnull=False to determine if the image field was set. It ended up returning all objects where image was not yet set, so I did some digging.
How FileField and ImageField Look in the Database
The FileField and ImageField are both implemented in your database table as a varchar field. Note the type column from the psql display table below:
Table "public.myapp_mymodel"
Column | Type | Collation | Nullable | Default
--------------+------------------------+-----------+----------+----------------------------------
id | bigint | | not null | generated by default as identity
image | character varying(100) | | not null |
This stores the relative path of the file, including your upload_to and filename.
The problem is that these strings have two values that might mean "empty": None and "".
How to Define a Model with Not Required File Fields
I had defined my model like this:
class MyModel(models.Model):
image = models.ImageField(
upload_to="images/",
null=True,
blank=True,
)
But I should have removed the null=True option:
class MyModel(models.Model):
image = models.ImageField(
upload_to="images/",
blank=True,
)
How to Filter for Empty File Fields
Now, I still cannot filter by image__isnull, because the image field should never be set to NULL in the database and None in Python.
But I can filter by .filter(image__exact=""), which is the empty string.
Or exclude those values with .exclude(image__exact="").
29 Oct 2024 12:00pm GMT
2025 Django Software Foundation board nomination
My self-nomination statement for the 2025 Django Software Foundation (DSF) board of directors elections
29 Oct 2024 4:00am GMT
28 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Opening Django Model Files in PyMuPDF
I have been working on a file upload feature for a Django project. We use django-storages to store files in AWS S3, but we store them on the filesystem for local development.
PyMuPDF is a Python library for reading and writing PDF files. It's very fast and I've been delighted to use it.
I ran into a small issue getting my Django file uploads to work with PyMuPDF. This post will outline my notes on how I worked through it.
Opening a file from the local filesystem
Let's say we have a model SlideDeck with a FileField that stores a PDF file:
class SlideDeck(models.Model):
pdf = models.FileField(
upload_to="slide_decks",
max_length="500",
)
And a model SlideImage that stores an image for each slide in the PDF:
class SlideImage(models.Model):
slide_deck = models.ForeignKey(
SlideDeck,
on_delete=models.CASCADE,
)
img = models.ImageField(
upload_to="slide_decks/images",
max_length="500",
)
And we have a helper function to create a list of SlideImage objects from a SlideDeck object:
def _create_empty_slides(slide_deck: SlideDeck) -> list[SlideImage]:
pdf_document = pymupdf.open(slide_deck.file.path)
slide_img_objs = SlideImage.objects.bulk_create(
[
SlideImage(slide_deck=slide_deck)
for i in range(len(pdf_document))
]
)
pdf_document.close()
return slide_img_objs
The above works with the Django default FileSystemStorage backend. But if you're using a remote storage backend like the AWS S3 backend from django-storages, the file will not be available on the filesystem.
We are using AWS S3 and this was the error I ran into when trying to open a file with open(model_obj.file.path):
NotImplementedError: This backend doesn't support absolute paths.
Should you open with file.name or file.path?
Assuming we have a model FieldFile object:
file = model_obj.file
file.name returns the relative path to the file.
file.path returns the absolute path on the local filesystem.
We could then rewrite the above _create_empty_slides() function like this:
def _create_empty_slides(slide_deck: SlideDeck) -> list[SlideImage]:
pdf_document = pymupdf.open(slide_deck.file.name)
slide_img_objs = SlideImage.objects.bulk_create(
[
SlideImage(slide_deck=slide_deck)
for i in range(len(pdf_document))
]
)
pdf_document.close()
return slide_img_objs
And that would still work on the filesystem, but it's not portable to a remote storage backend. More on that later.
Opening an InMemoryUploadedFile
There's a GitHub discussion about uploaded files in PyMuPDF. The author had to specify to seek back to the beginning of the file to open it:
import pymupdf
def get_pages_of_uploaded_pdf(request: HttpRequest) -> int:
# Get the file
uploaded_pdf = request.FILES.get("user_uploaded_pdf")
# Set read location
uploaded_pdf.seek(0)
# Open the file
pdf_document = pymupdf.open(
stream=uploaded_pdf.read(), filetype="pdf"
)
num_pages = len(pdf_document)
pdf_document.close()
return num_pages
Opening a file from remote storage
The PyMuPDF docs have a section on opening remote files. They outline getting the remote file content as a bytes object, and then opening the file with PyMuPDF:
import pymupdf
import requests
r = requests.get("https://mupdf.com/docs/mupdf_explored.pdf")
data = r.content
doc = pymupdf.open(stream=data)
I started to implement this in our project, but didn't want to have to check for what backend we're using every time we want to open a file.
So instead, we can leverage the default_storage class from Django to open the file:
import pymupdf
from django.core.files.storage import default_storage
def get_pages_from_pdf(slide_deck: SlideDeck) -> int:
# Get the file bytes data
with default_storage.open(slide_deck.file.name, "rb") as f:
content: bytes = f.read()
# Open the file with pymupdf
pdf_document = pymupdf.open(stream=content)
num_pages = len(pdf_document)
pdf_document.close()
return num_pages
This reads the entire file into memory as a bytes object in the content variable. If you're low on memory, this might create problems.
Opening a file with pymupdf as a context manager
We can rewrite the above function to use a context manager, automatically closing the file when we're done:
import pymupdf
from django.core.files.storage import default_storage
def get_pages_from_pdf(slide_deck: SlideDeck) -> int:
# Get the file bytes data
with default_storage.open(slide_deck.file.name, "rb") as f:
content: bytes = f.read()
# Open the file with pymupdf
with pymupdf.open(stream=content) as pdf_document:
num_pages = len(pdf_document)
return num_pages
28 Oct 2024 12:00pm GMT
25 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Django News - Last chance to run for the DSF Board - Oct 25th 2024
Django Software Foundation
Why you should run for the DSF Board, and my goals for the DSF in 2025 - Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Applications are open for the 2025 Django Software Foundation Board of Directors - you can apply until October 25th. So, in this post I'll do two things: try to convince you to run for the board, and document my goals and priorities for 2025.
Steering Council Wishlist for 6.X
Thoughts on what the upcoming Steering Council could/should work on.
Updates to Django
Today 'Updates to Django' is presented by Abigail Afi Gbadago from Djangonaut Space!
Last week we had 14 pull requests merged into Django by 12 different contributors - including 3 first-time contributors 👏 Congratulations to YashRaj1506 🚀, Ahmed Ibrahim and Justin Thurman for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board! 🚀
Coming in Django 5.2
- The new HttpResponse.text property has been added to provide text content for HTTP Responses (no more
response.content.decode()!) - Overriding password validation error messages is now allowed as opposed to overriding the actual validation method
- A new autodetector_class attribute has been added to the migration commands
Django Newsletter
Wagtail CMS
Wagtail 6.3a0 (LTS) release notes
For the upcoming Wagtail 6.3, which is designated as a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
Introducing the new starter kit for Wagtail CMS
Torchbox has released a new Wagtail News Template, designed to offer a high-performance, production-ready starter kit for Wagtail CMS, featuring a fully configured frontend and easy deployment to Fly.io.
Sponsored Link 1
YOUR AD HERE
Our newsletter has a large and engaged audience of active email subscribers and an impressive open (59%) and click rate (29%). Django News has availability this quarter for single week ads or bundle deals.
Articles
Django from first principles, part 19 - Deploying a simple Django project.
This is the 19th post in a series about building a full Django project, starting with a single file. This series is free to everyone, as soon as each post comes out.
Django and the Python 3.13 REPL
A working solution to using the new REPL in Django.
My Django wishlist explained
A lengthy and well-explained wishlist of future features/upgrades for Django.
Django's template-based form rendering: thoughts and pains
A collection of thoughts and impressions after moving to Django-native template-based form rendering with pretalx, my ~medium-sized(?) Django project.
Less htmx is More
The author's take on 2+ years of production HTMX experience.
Tutorials
Django Celery Tutorial to Background tasks
A very comprehensive tutorial on Celery, what it is, how to use it in Django projects, and several examples of different Celery tasks.
A Django Blog in 60 Seconds
It is more than possible with the help of the third-party package neapolitan.
Videos
Django migrations, friend or foe? Optimize them for testing
Django migrations are a great tool, but after years of changes in a project they can become very numerous, slowing down tests. Is it possible to optimize them?
Mapping out Berlin's female history with Django and Leaflet.js
An introduction to the side project Named After Women, built with Django, Leaflet.js, and React.
Hypermedia driven maps
Using Django, Leaflet.js and HTMX to seamlessly manage a CRUD geolocation app.
Django and htmx Tutorial: Easier Web Development
An hour-long tutorial from Christopher Trudeau exploring how the htmx library can bring dynamic functionality, like lazy loading, search-as-you-type, and infinite scroll, to your Django web applications with minimal JavaScript.
Django News Jobs
Software Engineer (Python) - Fully remote at Bidnamic 🆕
Full Stack Python Developer at TeraLumen Solutions Pvt Ltd 🆕
Senior Python Engineer at Kazang a company part of the Lesaka Technologies Group
Chief Technology Officer at Torchbox
Software Engineer, Archiving & Data Services (Remote) at Internet Archive
Django Developer -- Data Science & Algo Focus | Remote at Spotter AI
Full-stack Python Developer at Scalable Path
Documentation platform engineer at Canonical
Django Newsletter
Projects
OmenApps/django-templated-email-md
An extension for django-templated-email for creating emails with Markdown.
bmispelon/django_wplogin
Enhance your Django admin login page.
Sponsorship
🌟 Sponsor Django News
Would you and your company be interested in reaching over 4,000 active Django developers? We have the Fall sponsorship inventory available.
Please find out more on our sponsorship page.
Thank you for being a part of our community and supporting Django News!
This RSS feed is published on https://django-news.com/. You can also subscribe via email.
25 Oct 2024 3:00pm GMT
24 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Built with Django Newsletter - 2024 Week 43
Hey, Happy Tuesday!
Why are you getting this: *You signed up to receive this newsletter on Built with Django. I promised to send you the latest projects and jobs on the site as well as any other interesting Django content I encountered during the month. If you don't want to receive this newsletter, feel free to unsubscribe anytime.
News and Updates
- Got some inspiration and some time on my hands and built couple of new projects. One of them is the sponsor of today's newsletter (OSIG) and another I will share as soon as I feel like it is launch ready, which should be by the next newsletter issue.
- As I am developing new products, I am making constant updates to my django-saas-starter template.
It is in a good shape right now, but still has some work to do. If you are brave enough to give it a try, I would love to hear your feedback.
It is open to the public right now, and I might put it behind the paywall at some point (not soon), ala SaaS Pegasus.
- I'm trying a new thing. Along side developing new and existing projects, I would like to try purchasing existing profitable projects. To automate and add to my portfolio.
I recently purchased isitketo.org, migrated it to Django and put on autopilot. It was awesome. Recently was talking to owner of Code Review Doctor and while he was open to selling his business, it was a little too pricey for me.
All of this to say is that if you want to sell your project, reach out to me, maybe we can work something out 👍.
Sponsors
This issue is sponsored by OSIG. Well, sponsor is a strong word. It is just another project of mine that I wanted to share with you 🙈. Fully free!
If you want an automated way for generating OG images for social media, this might be for you.
If you want to become a real sponsor, just reply to this email or check out available options here.
Projects
- Know Your Group - Community engagement tool
- Canine Blog - Created a responsive pet blogging site using Django, DRF, and React, where enthusiasts can share tales of their beloved canine companions.
- Service Watch - Simple monitoring for websites, apps, API's, and any other internet connected software.
- OSIG - Generate Beautiful OG Images for Your Site... For Free!
- iformat.io-your go-to platform for seamless digital content management. - iformat.io-your go-to platform for seamless digital content management. We offer a comprehensive suite of services to convert your files effortlessly. Whether you need to transform video formats like.
From the Community
- Django for Hire by Peter Baumgartner at Lincoln Loop. Lincoln Loop is one of the cooler development agencies. I haven't worked with them, but I get a feeling that they are super productive and fun to work with. I want to build something like this in the future.
- On Static Media and Django by Lincoln Loop
- Serving Django Projects (Revisited) - by Lincoln Loop
Top 3 links from last Issue
Support
You can support this project by using one of the affiliate links below. These are always going to be projects I use and love! No "Bluehost" crap here!
- Buttondown - Email newsletter tool I use to send you this newsletter.
- Readwise - Best reading software company out there. I you want to up your e-reading game, this is definitely for you! It also so happens that I work for Readwise. Best company out there!
- Hetzner - IMHO the best place to buy a VPS or a server for your projects. I'll be doing a tutorial on how to use this in the future.
- SaaS Pegasus is one of the best (if not the best) ways to quickstart your Django Project. If you have a business idea but don't want to set up all the boring stuff (Auth, Payments, Workers, etc.) this is for you!
24 Oct 2024 1:35pm GMT
23 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Weeknotes (2024 week 43)
Weeknotes (2024 week 43)
I had some much needed time off, so this post isn't that long even though four weeks have passed since the last entry.
From webpack to rspack
I've been really happy with rspack lately. Converting webpack projects to rspack is straightforward since it mostly supports the same configuration, but it's much much faster since it's written in Rust. Rewriting things in Rust is a recurring theme, but in this case it really helps a lot. Building the frontend of a larger project of ours consisting of several admin tools and complete frontend implementations for different teaching materials only takes 10 seconds now instead of several minutes. That's a big and relevant difference.
Newcomers should probably still either use rsbuild, Vite or maybe no bundler at all. Vanilla JS and browser support for ES modules is great. That being said, I like cache busting, optimized bundling and far-future expiry headers in production and hot module reloading in development a lot, so learning to work with a frontend bundler is definitely still worth it.
Dark mode and light mode
I have been switching themes in my preferred a few times per year in the past. The following ugly bit of vimscript helps switch me the theme each time the sun comes out when working outside:
let t:light = 0
function! FiatLux()
if t:light == 0
:set background=light
let t:light = 1
else
:set background=dark
let t:light = 0
endif
endfunction
nnoremap <F12> :call FiatLux()<CR>
I'm using the Ptyxis terminal emulator currently, I haven't investigated yet if there's a shortcut to toggle dark and light mode for it as well. Using F10 to open the main menu works fine though, and using the mouse wouldn't be painful either.
Helping out in the Django forum and the Discord
I have found some pleasure in helping out in the Django Forum and in the official Django Discord. I sometimes wonder why more people aren't reading the Django source code when they hit something which looks like a bug or something which they do not understand. I find Django's source code very readable and I have found many nuggets within it. I'd always recommend checking the documentation or maybe official help channels first, but the code is also out there and that fact should be taken advantage of.
Releases
- django-content-editor 7.1: Fixed a bug where the ordering and region fields were handled incorrectly when they appear on one line in the fieldset. Also improved the presentation of inlines in unknown regions and clarified the meaning of the move to region dropdown. Also, released the improvements from previous patch releases as a new minor release because that's what I should have been doing all along.
- form-designer 0.27: A user has been bitten by
slugifyremoving cyrillic characters because it only keeps ASCII characters around. Here's the wontfixed bug in the Django issue tracker: #8391. I fixed the issue by removing the slugification (is that even a word?) when generating choices.
23 Oct 2024 5:00pm GMT
A Django Blog in 60 Seconds
You can create a full-featured Django blog application in less than sixty seconds. Let's see how, with the help of [neapolitan](https://github.com/carltongibson/neapolitan), a new third-party package from former Django Fellow Carlton …
23 Oct 2024 2:29pm GMT
22 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Django TemplateYaks
Thursday morning, I fell into a rabbit hole... Inside the hole, there was a yak! I started shaving the yak and only then did I see it was a Django TemplateYak! A tale of a proof of concept for Class-Based Django TemplateTags
22 Oct 2024 5:00am GMT
18 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Django News - DSF Weekly Office Hours - Oct 18th 2024
News
➡️ Expression of interest: Django 6.x Steering Council elections
The DSF is seeking candidates for the upcoming Django Steering Council 6.x elections-interested individuals can fill out this form to express interest or get feedback on their eligibility.
Why Django supports the Open Source Pledge
Sentry is one of several partners who have launched the Open Source Pledge, a commitment for member companies to pay OSS maintainers meaningfully for their work.
Python Insider: Python 3.14.0 alpha 1 is now available
It's now time for a new alpha of a new version of Python.
Django Software Foundation
Announcing weekly DSF office hours
The Django Software Foundation is opening up weekly office hours, Wednesdays at 6PM UTC, to work on and discuss various DSF initiatives.
2025 DSF Board Nominations
Nominations for the Django Software Foundation are OPEN until October 25th. There have been a host of articles about what the next Board might accomplish to help progress Django. Consider applying!
DSF initiatives I'd like to see
Former Django Fellow Carlton Gibson weighs in with his top three initiatives the new Django Software Foundation Board could work on.
Updates to Django
Today 'Updates to Django' is presented by Velda Kiara from Djangonaut Space!
Last week we had 23 pull requests merged into Django by 17 different contributors - including 7 first-time contributors! Congratulations to Calvin Vu, Mario Munoz 🚀, Meta Petric, Ekin Ertaç, gabn88, Antoliny Lee, and Bona Fide IT GmbH for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board 🌟!
Python 3.13 was released on October 7th and Django 5.1.3 is already compatible! We also have asynchronous authentication backends added in Django 5.2.
On the community front, Djangonaut Space Session 3 has officially launched into orbit 🚀!
Django Newsletter
Articles
Deploying a Django app with Kamal, AWS ECR, and Github Actions - Dylan Castillo
A comprehensive guide on deploying a Django application using Kamal, AWS ECR, and GitHub Actions, covering VPS preparation, Dockerfile creation, AWS configuration, Kamal setup, and automation of the deployment process.
Proposal for a Django project template
A take on what could be a project template for Django advanced usage, with modern tooling (for Python and UI dependencies, as well as configuration/environment management), but not too opinionated.
Building an automatically updating live blog in Django
Django co-creator Simon Willison wrote a live blogging app for OpenAI's DevDay event.
Two weeks with uv - Oliver Andrich
Why the author is fully sold on uv two weeks after switching from Poetry, despite some known quirks.
Revisiting Django Built to Last
Tim Schilling reflects on the growing momentum in the Django community around fostering new contributors and maintaining reliability, as highlighted at DjangoCon US 2024.
Perks of Being a Python Core Developer
Curious what it means to be a Python core developer? Mariatta lays it all out here in this detailed post.
How I do Django APIs in PyCharm
Paul Everitt walks through how he builds APIs in Django, taking advantage of various PyCharm special features.
Django + Postgres: The Hunt for Long Running Queries
Using django-pgactivity for application-level monitoring of database queries.
Videos
Django Day Copenhagen 2024
The full playlist from this year's Django Day is now available on YouTube.
EuroPython 2024 - YouTube
The videos from EuroPython 2024, held in Prague, the Czech Republic July 8-14th are now available.
Raffaella Suardini - From junior developer to Django contributor: My open source journey
Raffaella discusses how the Djangonaut Space program transformed her professional path from a junior developer to an active member of the Django community.
✨ Raffaella is also a frequent author of our 'Updates to Django' section on Django News. 👏
Podcasts
Thibaud Colas - 2025 DSF Board Nominations
Thibaud is a Django Software Foundation Board Member (Secretary) and serves on the Django accessibility team. He is also on the core team for Wagtail and works at Torchbox. We discuss the current status of Django, the upcoming DSF Board elections, opportunities available for community members, and more.
Django News Jobs
Senior Python Engineer at Kazang a company part of the Lesaka Technologies Group 🆕
Chief Technology Officer at Torchbox 🆕
Software Engineer, Archiving & Data Services (Remote) at Internet Archive
Django Developer -- Data Science & Algo Focus at Spotter AI
Full-stack Python Developer at Scalable Path
Documentation platform engineer at Canonical
Senior Full Stack Developer at Baserow
Django Newsletter
Projects
anexia-it/django-rest-passwordreset
An extension of Django REST Famework, providing a configurable password reset strategy.
SmileyChris/easy-thumbnails
Easy thumbnails for Django.
Sponsorship
🌟 Support Django News
Would you and your company be interested in reaching over 4,000 active Django developers? We have the Fall sponsorship inventory available.
Please find out more on our sponsorship page.
Thank you for being a part of our community and supporting Django News!
This RSS feed is published on https://django-news.com/. You can also subscribe via email.
18 Oct 2024 3:00pm GMT
Why you should run for the DSF Board, and my goals for the DSF in 2025
Applications are open for the 2025 Django Software Foundation Board of Directors - you can apply until October 25th. So, in this post I'll do two things: try to convince you to run for the board, and document my goals and priorities for 2025.
18 Oct 2024 5:00am GMT
Epic Debugging, Hilarious Outcome - Building SaaS #205
In this episode, I dug into an issue with sign up. What I thought was going to be a minor issue to fix turned into a massively intense debugging session. We ended up going very deep with the django-allauth package to understand what was going on.
18 Oct 2024 5:00am GMT
Epic Debugging, Hilarious Outcome - Building SaaS #205
In this episode, I dug into an issue with sign up. What I thought was going to be a minor issue to fix turned into a massively intense debugging session. We ended up going very deep with the django-allauth package to understand what was going on.
18 Oct 2024 5:00am GMT
17 Oct 2024
Django community aggregator: Community blog posts
Getting RequestContext in Your Templates
Lately, we've been taking over projects from people who began building their first site in Django, but either got in over their head or just found they didn't have the time to continue. As I review the existing code, the first issue I typically see is using the render_to_response shortcut without including the RequestContext, preventing context processors from being used in the templates. The standard symptom is when people can't access MEDIA_URL in their templates.
Here are a few ways to add RequestContext to your templates.
Option #1: Adding RequestContext to render_to_response
The Django documentation recommends passing RequestContext as an argument to render_to_response like this:
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.template import RequestContext
def my_view(request):
# View code here...
return render_to_response('my_template.html',
my_data_dictionary,
context_instance=RequestContext(request))
This works, but as you can see, it adds a fair amount of repetitive code to your views.
Option #2: Wrapper for render_to_response
Don't repeat yourself. Create a wrapper like this, courtesy of Django Snippet #3
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response
from django.template import RequestContext
def render_response(req, *args, **kwargs):
kwargs['context_instance'] = RequestContext(req)
return render_to_response(*args, **kwargs)
Option #3: Use Generic Views
Django's generic views include RequestContext by default. Although the docs show them being used in urls.py, you can just as easily use them in your views. James Bennet gave some examples of this technique on his blog back in '06. It looks something like this:
from django.views.generic import list_detail
def my_view(request):
# View code here...
return list_detail.object_list_(request,
queryset=Foo.objects.all(),
extra_context=some_dict)
Most views can be distilled down to either a single object or list of objects with some extra variables thrown in. When they can't, simply use direct_to_template.
Option #4: Getting Creative with Decorators
I came across a technique I hadn't seen before a couple of days ago when poking around django-cashflow. It monkey patches render_to_response using option #1 above, then creates uses a decorator for it. The code looks like this:
def render_to(template_name):
def renderer(func):
def wrapper(request, *args, **kw):
output = func(request, *args, **kw)
if not isinstance(output, dict):
return output
return render_to_response(request, template_name, output)
return wrapper
return renderer
@render_to('my_template.html')
def my_view(request):
# View code here...
return some_dict
Pretty slick.
How About You?
I use generic views for a few of reasons.
It is less verbose than option #1Options 2 & 4 are clever, but I prefer to use built-ins whenever possible. One of the reasons I chose Python over Ruby is because it isn't a TIMTOWTDI language. Wrappers and shortcuts are great, but they can also make it more difficult for someone else to jump into your code and start working. With generic views, you get sane defaults and everything is already fully documented and clear to other Django developers.They provide a standardized naming scheme for your templates. Again allowing other developers to jump right into your code without having to learn your style.
So how about you? What technique do you use and why?
17 Oct 2024 10:09pm GMT
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17 Oct 2024 10:09pm GMT