Simon Willison’s Weblog

DictMixin. I wasn’t aware of this Python class (part of the UserDict module): lets you implement __get__, __set__, __del__ and keys() and provides the other dictionary methods for you.

# 17th August 2007, 10:34 am / dictionaries, dictmixin, ian-bicking, python, stdlib, userdict

AuditTrail. Add change tracking and history to a Django model with a single line of code. Doesn’t handle relationships though, which is definitely the toughest part of this problem.

# 15th August 2007, 1 pm / audittrail, django, history, orm, python

Finding Lookup Items that Are Not Used. How to do left outer joins (and other custom SQL) using the Django ORM.

# 13th August 2007, 5:08 pm / django, michael-trier, orm, python, sql

Ubuntu -- python-django. Sweet, Django 0.96 is packaged for Ubuntu Gutsy.

# 11th August 2007, 8:47 am / django, gutsy, python, ubuntu

Atom Models. Building Python classes that act as utility wrappers around data stored in an lxml DOM object.

# 7th August 2007, 4:02 pm / atom, dom, ian-bicking, lxml, python, xml

A nice example of when to use reduce in python. As a shortcut for assembling a large OR query using the Django ORM.

# 2nd August 2007, 11:51 pm / django, orm, python, reduce

Cabochon event server. Written in Python (on top of SQLObject and Paste), uses JSON for messages, allows event consumers to subscribe with a callback URL.

# 2nd August 2007, 8:36 am / cabochon, callbacks, events, json, paste, python, sqlobject

stomp.py. A Python client library for accessing ActiveMQ using the STOMP protocol. Pleasantly simple API for both sending and accepting messages.

# 1st August 2007, 1:50 pm / activemq, messaging, python, stomp

Django, iCal and vObject. Easy iCal generation for Django using vObject.

# 1st August 2007, 11:09 am / derek-willis, django, icalendar, python, vobject

Thread Synchronization Mechanisms in Python. Locks, RLocks, Semaphores, Events and Conditions as explained by Fredrik Lundh.

# 29th July 2007, 9:32 pm / conditions, effbot, events, fredrik-lundh, locks, python, rlocks, semaphores, threads, tutorial

mod_wsgi 1.0 Release Candiate Available. mod_wsgi is shaping up to be an excellent alternative to mod_python.

# 26th July 2007, 8:21 pm / django, modpython, modwsgi, python, wsgi

Mozilla and IronPython: IronMonkey. Interesting to note that all three new Mozilla projects are being lead by experienced Python developers.

# 26th July 2007, 8:07 pm / ironmonkey, ironpython, javascript, mozilla, python, voidspace

Instant Django. Portable Django environment for Windows, no installation required. Can also be run from a USB thumb drive.

# 24th July 2007, 6:49 pm / django, instantdjango, python, usb, windows

Django Master Class. Notes and slides from the OSCON tutorial I gave yesterday with Jacob Kaplan-Moss and Jeremy Dunck.

# 24th July 2007, 3:20 pm / django, jacob-kaplan-moss, jeremy-dunck, oscon, oscon07, python, speaking, my-talks, tutorial

Undelete in Django. Inspired by the conversation about undo the other day, Nathan Ostgard created a simple solution based around custom managers and a trashed_at model field.

# 20th July 2007, 6:54 pm / custommanagers, django, nathan-ostgard, orm, python, undelete, undo

Announcing Babel. Impressive new Python i18n / l10n package, with improved message extraction and a huge amount of bundled locale data.

# 20th July 2007, 12:20 pm / babel, christopher-lenz, cldr, i18n, l10n, locale, python, unicode

Logic in Templates. I don’t think it would hurt Django to have a bit more support for conditional logic in templates, but I wouldn’t go as far as supporting the ability to call Python functions directly.

# 19th July 2007, 8:35 am / christopher-lenz, django, logic, python, templates

ThingDB. Another extensible key/value pair data store, constructed for the Open Library based on Aaron Swartz’s Infogami technology.

# 17th July 2007, 10:21 am / aaron-swartz, infogami, openlibrary, postgresql, python, thingdb

Python Tuples are Not Just Constant Lists. “The index in a tuple has an implied semantic”.

# 17th July 2007, 7:53 am / james-tauber, python, tuples

lwqueue. Lightweight cross-language message queue system, written in Perl with client libraries in Perl, Python and Ruby.

# 16th July 2007, 10:04 am / lightweight, lwqueue, perl, peter-cooper, python, queue, ruby

Partial OpenID provider implementation from idproxy.net. It’ll take a while to package up provider support for django-openid, but in the meantime here’s some partial, incomplete, poorly documented example code ripped from idproxy.net. Hopefully this will give people trying to figure out the JanRain Python library a bit of a leg up.

# 12th July 2007, 6:48 pm / django, europython, europython07, idproxy, openid, partial, python

gSculpt. Powerful open source modelling software, written in Python and demonstrated (to much applause) as the last lightning talk of EuroPython 2007.

# 11th July 2007, 11:48 pm / 3d, europython, europython2007, gsculpt, modelling, open-source, python

pybraces. I didn’t know this was possible: a source level filter implemented as a custom -*- encoding: braces -*-

# 11th July 2007, 2:48 pm / braces, encoding, hack, python, tim-hatch

Bazaar/Avahi mDNS Plugin. Adds ZeroConf support to Bazaar, so you can “bzr share” a branch over the local network and “bzr browse” to discover shared branches. Designed for sprints with a local network but no internet access.

# 10th July 2007, 10:17 am / avahi, bazaar, plugins, python, sprints, zeroconf

PyCon UK 2007. The weekend of the 8th and 9th of September, currently accepting talk submissions. I’ll be running a Django tutorial session.

# 10th July 2007, 9:42 am / call-for-proposals, conferences, django, pycon, pyconuk, python

Storm. New Python ORM from Canonical, emphasising multiple database support, intelligent local cache invalidation and a thin layer over the underlying SQL.

# 9th July 2007, 8:44 am / canonical, orm, python, sql, storm

Interview with Leah Culver: The Making of Pownce. Django + Perlbal + S3 + AIR.

# 7th July 2007, 10:05 pm / air, django, leah-culver, perlbal, pownce, python, s3

The Django Web Application Framework. I’m slowly pushing my presentations from the past couple of years up to Slideshare. This is a Django talk from April 2006, so it’s a little out of date.

# 5th July 2007, 1:07 am / accu, django, python, slides, slideshare, speaking, my-talks

PyMOTW: subprocess. Better documentation for the swiss army knife of process control tools.

# 4th July 2007, 10:18 am / doug-hellmann, python, subprocess