02 Apr 2025

feedDjango community aggregator: Community blog posts

PyCon US 2025 - Elaine Wong & Jon Banafato

Sponsor

This episode was brought to you by HackSoft, your development partner beyond code. From custom software development to consulting, team augmentation, or opening an office in Bulgaria, they're ready to take your Django project to the next level!

02 Apr 2025 4:00pm GMT

28 Mar 2025

feedDjango community aggregator: Community blog posts

Django News - 20 PRs Merged into Django Core This Week Alone! - Mar 28th 2025

Updates to Django

Today 'Updates to Django' is presented by Abigail Afi Gbadago from the DSF Board and Djangonaut Space!🚀

Last week we had 20 pull requests merged into Django by 14 different contributors - including 4 first-time contributors! Congratulations to mguegnol, YQ, Filip Owczarek and Ahmed Nassar for having their first commits merged into Django - welcome on board!🥳

This week's Django highlights:

Django Newsletter

Wagtail CMS

aria-label is a letdown

Analysis of aria-label usage on Wagtail sites shows 34% of instances are likely faulty, advocating for enhanced linting, proper label alternatives, and improved accessibility documentation.

wagtail.org

Sponsored Link 2

MongoDB Django Backend: Open Source & Ready!

Contribute or explore! The official MongoDB backend for Django is now on GitHub. Dive into the code and help shape the future of Django and MongoDB integration. Try it today!

fnf.dev

Articles

Smoke test your Django admin site

Use parametric testing with pytest to smoke test Django admin changelist routes by dynamically extracting URL patterns and ensuring all admin pages render correctly.

jmduke.com

🤖 A better Django version/update command and Prompt-driven-development (PDD)

Jeff writes about Prompt-driven development produces (PDD), a refined self-updating Django command that checks for version updates from PyPI and automates updates while enhancing the developer experience.

webology.dev

"Any Updates?"

Posting 'Any updates?' on open-source project issue trackers burdens maintainers; instead, donate, volunteer, or wait patiently to support efficient progress.

justinmayer.com

How to Create a Helm Chart for a Django App

Guide details deploying Django apps with Helm charts on Kubernetes, integrating GitHub Actions, GHCR, and Ansible for automated container image releases and configuration deployments.

caktusgroup.com

Building accessible web forms in Django

A step by step reference to building accessible web forms in Django.

valentinog.com

Improving licence metadata

How to update your Python project for PEP 639.

hugovk.dev

Events

PyCon US Schedule

Check out the detailed schedule for tutorials, talks, and more this May in Pittsburgh, PA.

pycon.org

EuroPython Tickets

EuroPython is happening in Prague, Czech Republic this year, July 14-20. Tickets are available with further information coming soon!

europython.eu

Podcasts

Talking Postgres Ep25: Why Python developers just use Postgres with Dawn Wages

Django developer and PSF Foundation Chair Dawn Wages discusses why Postgres is so popular with Python & Django developers, as well as notes on Djangonaut Space, and an overview of the Postgres chapter from her upcoming Domain-Driven Django book.

talkingpostgres.com

Django News Jobs

Web Developer at Full Fact 🆕

Senior Developer Advocate at MongoDB

Software engineer(all levels) at Carbon Equity

Junior Full Stack Developer - Python at Krotos

Django Newsletter

Projects

suitenumerique/docs

A collaborative note taking, wiki and documentation platform that scales. Built with Django and React. Opensource alternative to Notion or Outline.

github.com

bckohan/django-enum

Full and natural support for enumerations as Django model fields.

github.com

Sponsorship

🌟 Sponsor Django News

Are you interested in connecting with a vibrant community of over 4,100 active Django developers? We have sponsorship opportunities for this spring and the upcoming summer season. Reach an engaged audience and support the Django community!

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Django Newsletter

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28 Mar 2025 3:00pm GMT

Cakti Share Their Favorite Tools For Streamlined Workflows

Let's jump into it!

At Caktus, we're always looking for tools that help us streamline our workflows, increase productivity, and make our day-to-day tasks more efficient. Whether you're managing projects, writing code, or debugging, the right tools can make all the difference. Here are some of our favorite tools that we love using to get the job done!

Keanya: Project Manager

Django Documentation

As I transition from software development into technical project management, I don't always have the cycles to write code as much as I would like. However, I aim to maintain my technical knowledge and skills. One of my favorite tools to achieve this is the tried and true Django documentation, which is comprehensive and incredibly user-friendly. The documentation breaks down complex concepts into digestible sections, making it fairly simple to find what you need. It is organized logically, so you can easily move from one section to another without feeling lost. This documentation isn't just a reference guide; it's also a learning tool. It covers everything from Django's core concepts to advanced features, with plenty of examples and use cases that help contextualize the information. For a technical project manager like me, the ability to access this comprehensive, easy-to-follow resource is invaluable.

Jeanette: Developer

GitHub Copilot

I love GitHub Copilot because it reduces the time I spend on repetitive tasks and writing boilerplate code, allowing me to focus more on solving problems. Its suggestions streamline my workflow by predicting and completing code snippets. Beyond that, it offers simple, in-line explanations that help me understand unfamiliar functions or syntax without breaking my workflow. This makes learning new technologies and debugging much faster, as I can quickly grasp the purpose of a given piece of code.

GitLens

GitLens is an awesome VS Code extension that makes working with Git way easier and more efficient. It gives super useful insights into code history, showing who changed what, when, and why-right inside the editor. One of my favorite features is the blame annotations, which let me see commit history inline so I can quickly understand how a file has evolved. It also comes with powerful tools, like commit searching, making it much easier to navigate big projects. Whether I'm debugging, reviewing a PR, or tracking down when a bug pops up, GitLens makes Git so much smoother to work with!

Tobias: CEO/Lead Developer

Ansible

Caktus utilizes Ansible to manage its clients' diverse infrastructure requirements, which include public cloud environments (AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud) as well as on-premise physical hardware and self-managed Kubernetes clusters in client-owned data centers. Ansible is the only tool Caktus has found that can effectively adapt to this wide range of infrastructure environments. One of my favorites is the kubernetes.core.helm module, which allows us to automate all of the Helm charts required for a cluster. In a disaster recovery scenario, this allows us to bring the system back online in a new environment as quickly as possible while minimizing the possibility of human error.

Pair Programming

As we previously wrote about on the Caktus blog and spoke about at DjangoCon Europe 2024, pair programming is a big part of our daily work life at Caktus. Pair programming remotely is far easier with a good tool, and Visual Studio Live Share and Code With Me are both good options.

Gerald: Scrum Master/Quality Assurance Analyst

Font Finder Chrome Extension

Font Finder is one of my go-to Chrome extensions when I'm testing major CSS updates to a site because it makes checking fonts quick and easy. Instead of digging through the dev tools to comb through the CSS, I can just click on any text element on the page and instantly see details like font type, size, color, line height, etc.

Page Load Time Chrome Extension

When testing data-driven sites, I like using the Page Load Time Chrome extension because it gives me an instant read on how fast a page loads without needing to dig through dev tools. It's great for spotting performance issues, especially on pages that pull in a lot of data on initial load. This extension displays the load time right in the toolbar, making it easy to track load time as I test different pages.

Go Full Page Chrome Extension

Go Full Page lets me capture full-page screenshots in one click. I've found it especially useful for capturing long pages that might have layout issues. Being able to do this without the hassle of stitching images together or taking multiple screenshots helps save time and effort.

Ronard: Developer

Direnv

Direnv allows you to load and unload environment variables depending on the current directory. It is ideal for navigating many projects at once, all you have to do is cd into the target directory and direnv handles everything from your Python virtual environment, secrets, API keys, kubeconfig for Kubernetes, and more.

Invoke Kubesae

Invoke Kubesae is one of our internal tools at Caktus. inv encompasses the most-used management tasks for working with Kubernetes clusters. As someone who manages several Kubernetes clusters, I use it daily. I love that it shortens many valuable commands, but also shows the full command on execution. It's an open-source tool and contributions are always welcomed.

Karen: Technical Director/Lead Developer

Netdata

Netdata is a system monitoring tool that makes it easy to see characteristics of system usage over time, receive alerts for problems, and automatically set up corrective actions such as restarting a service that perhaps has encountered a deadlock. It's also possible to run it entirely on-premises without any paid subscription, so it's friendly to small non-profit or limited-budget organizations.

Colin: CTO/Lead Developer

Jupyter Notebooks

Jupyter Notebooks are an invaluable tool for data analysis and visualization. They allow me to write and execute code, view results immediately, and "show my work" in a way that a script doesn't, making them ideal for prototyping. This real-time feedback loop is especially useful when working with data, as I can quickly verify that my code behaves as expected.

Jupyter Extension for Visual Studio Code

The Jupyter Extension for Visual Studio Code allows me to use Jupyter Notebooks directly within VS Code, which is my preferred code editor. This means I can open and edit .ipynb files and work with both notebooks and Python code in a single location. Additionally, I can leverage GitHub Copilot for code suggestions inside notebook cells, a feature not available when using the Jupyter Notebook server.

We hope you found this list of tools useful! At Caktus, we're always exploring ways to improve our workflows, and the right tools can make all the difference in boosting productivity and collaboration. What are some of your favorite tools? Let us know in the comments!

28 Mar 2025 1:09am GMT