Evangelizer's blog - Python

CherryPy 3.2 is broken. damn

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sun, 17 Jul 2011 05:47:17 -0700

sooo dum dee dum I head over to cherrypy download page and download the latest version which happens to be 3.2.1 as of now.

so like a kid opening his christmas gift I untar the archive and run

python setup.py install
File "setup.py", line 25
'wsgiserver2|ssl_pyopenssl' if python3 else 'wsgiserver3'
^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I think cherrypy is dead. to pack a failure like this is pretty bad.

I try to download 3.2.0rc2 ... oh empty directory

ok lets try 3.2.0rc1 ... found something.... download

untar

python setup.py install
...

tada! it works...
but frankly this isnt getting cherrypy any points for uploading a broken package 9completely uninstallable) into their repo as so called stable fracking release. @the Devs of Cherrypy, when toasters show up at your doorstep you will remember this.

end of rant T_T

a new contender appears... Pylons I choose you. Pylons vs Django

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 19:47:06 -0700

Today I really want to fight.

I love django. But love is like that... fleeting. The stability and reliability of django is undeniable. So anyway why I think of pylons.

Pylons is developing very fast. That may be good or bad. The first Problem I encountered with django recently was lack of common interface to NoSQL. There is work under development but nothing concrete. There is talk of Alchemy but nothing concrete and usable. Pylons on the other hand simply loves to merge with anyone and create off springs. Damn iRobots.

If you visit http://pylonshq.com/ you will see that it does claim support for NoSQL and SQLAlchemy. Catch.com is known to use pylons and MongoDB so there is production stuff..

When using PHP I used to be scared of how to start a project like Advertising Marketplace. Yes its been done like Adbrite.com but looking at OpenX it just doesn't look like something I would wanna do. To me OpenX has fail written all over it.

With django I just want to get started. I know it will be a breeze. Except I hate MySQL or SQL in general when it comes to interwebs. My experience with running the massive GoNZB.com usenet search engine reminds me how painful it was. Which is why Pylons comes into the scene and with Form Alchemy it hard to not think of Pylons.

There is a good starting point for everyone at Pylons just like Django. http://www.pylonscasts.com/ shows screencast. or it must. But sadly right now its always offline.

We shall see if I make somehting in Pylons. Right now I am hard at work with a django based enterprise solution plus my very boring ITILv3 certification which promises a job of 33,000 US$ per annum. Singapore I choose you.... I fail.

django iphone and python iphone related projects

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 13:02:59 -0700

There are some good examples, snippets and projects now in development for mobile environments like iPhone and Android. I am not speaking of application development per se, which is limited to platform-only programming. In my one sided opinion, no phone is so great as to ask for its own development environment, language and platform. We based apps is the way to go. This is my compilation of django or python related iphone stuff. Ill post android stuff later.

A nifty iphone push notification system with source code and some documentation
http://leepa.github.com/django-iphone-push/

A mobile admin interface for django (this is great I think my future/existing clients will love this. too bad my company works with Symfony blah blah)
http://code.google.com/p/django-mobileadmin/

comment: the docs are weirdly located at http://api.rst2a.com/1.0/rst2/html?uri=http%3A//django-mobileadmin.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/docs/overview.rst&style=revver-dev someone should download and pdf this before its gone.
Drawback is they use google code hosting (lol?) but realizing their mistake here's teh github mirror
https://github.com/jezdez/django-mobileadmin

How to switch template when iPhone is detected an example
http://djangosnippets.org/snippets/2035/
Some more ideas on templating for iPhone using a mini_render_to_response
http://menendez.com/blog/easily-code-iphone-templates-django/

comments: I would double check if the user agent string is correct and what about iPads? nvm them they are a nuisance.

then there are idiots who just waste time, stealing docs and making it into iphone app. i am telling ya this iphone thing is getting crazier than it should. it might head the iDotComBust way

[and then we found Kyle!...] iPhone Web service with Django
http://justinvoss.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/creating-a-simple-iphone-web-service-in-django/

haven't covered python as it requires filtering through lot of crap and ghost projects which have no code.
EDIT: oh there if ofcourse
http://pyobjc.sourceforge.net/documentation/index.html pyObjectiveC.
This might come in handy for those
who prefer python. If you have used Pyrex then I suppose this should be easy for you to pick up. I have not even started on that stuff yet.

if anyone happens to visit this page out of traggazillions of interwebs you are fated to be here. share what you know before you leave. xD. thanks,

Python 2.4 2.5 2.6 and 2.7 Windows MySQLdb python installation

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 10:21:11 -0800

Let us save time on this very annoying mysqldb install for python. Its not working for me on Windows, Centos or anywhere. I need to get work done and googling around isn't helping much. I would rather just install it however and as long as it works we can get along..

So reminder to me for next time:
You can't install eggs and sources for any library from Python packages GO HERE
http://www.lfd.uci.edu/~gohlke/pythonlibs/ Installer.

Because googling will not help you find this link thanks to spam and "SEO" < < This is the place with other libraries as well so might come in handy if I get stuck again. There are some sites who copied from here and started to promote it etc. talk about a-holes.

back to practicals: In the link above simply search the page for MySQL-Python which is the official package name. Then find the right file by looking for python version (only difference is for amd64 but since thats a dead thing we can ignore those). I have used the mysqldb-python win32 for python 2.6 and python 2.7 on Vista and Windows 7 respectively without issues. for example the package name MySQL-python-1.2.3.win32-py2.6.‌exe means its MySQL-Python version 1.2.3 for ANY windows platform with python 2.6. Look for similar package.

I thank the maintainer and I hope he/she continues the good work.

p.s. I hate those [specially american] blogs that talk so much story and cock-a-dooodle instead of getting to the point. As soon as I read "I was eating my ... " when searching for mysqldb compile errors I know its a f*gg*ts blog.

how to structure your django project

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 22:46:43 -0800

This is something I think about everytime I make a new django project. Instinctively it appears I do the right thing or maybe its just how django makes you think.

In essense you would want to create an app "creatapp" and think of it as module with the project.
For example I have category and subcategory for posts so I put them all in "Posts" app and in the same Model.py file.

But I may have categories in another app. Theoretically this is not a problem for django because you using a different app and there should be no conflict.
the problem for me personally is representation when I am coding or looking at DB. django does make tables list posts_category which helps. However I still want to be clear and avoid any confusion when using both Post and XX Categories in a 3rd app. To disambiguate I do this

MyProject/
- Posts/
-- models.py
- App2/
-- models.py

In Posts/ models.py I will have my classes named as follows

class PostCategory(...)
class PostSubcategory(...)
class Post(...)

I have noticed that I sometimes confuse myself and try to make too many Apps in the project thinking of every model as an app. Well I solve this problem using a mindmap. If you are making a vertical into any portion of your project then "its a App!" (reference to memebase). End of the day there is no right or wrong way, its entirely up to the dev. there are suggested methods based on experience. How you pack your bag is entirely up to you as long as you got everything you need in the bag.

In conclusion.
So each time you begin the quest, take note of the scrolls. its better not to carry too many scrolls but you don't want one scroll to be too fat. This will help you greatly if you have to face that french castle again. It will be easier to run if things go "south"

django from decorator import decorator ImportError: No module named decorator

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 03:25:53 -0800

I ran into this problem and luckily i found out why.

the decorator needs to be installed to your site-packages using "python setup.py" install method.

you can download the latest decorator package here http://pypi.python.org/simple/decorator/

off-topic
I am making too many django posts haha.I am considering making a new category for it under python. But then again its only a matter of time things get our of hand with twisted, cherrypy etc etc.

Python Django South Eclipse Pydev PostgreSQL

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sat, 25 Dec 2010 15:56:19 -0800

After having installed eclipse + python +pydev + django + postgres + django-south (migrations) on windows laptop ages ago I forgot to write it down. It required some serious googling for a whoel night but I did not get any problems, it was all one go. That windows laptop crashed on itself with disk failure (doh) . Now I couldn't recall how I did install the environment before but I managed to do it again but not as well as last time. Its ofcourse usable but that really was the perfect install with Eclipse showing me django or python shell right inside the IDE, ability to runserver within eclipse etc. (dos prompt sucks) However I still got most of the things working again on my new laptop. Unfortunately I installed Aptana version of eclipse which I think is not right for Pydev + django. that is the only difference from my previous Eclipse 3 vanilla install.

Continue reading "Python Django South Eclipse Pydev PostgreSQL"

setting up django development environment (python+django+pydev+svn) on windows XP/Vista

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Sun, 23 May 2010 15:15:08 -0700

Ok this is a note to myself, since I have to do this at least a few times. It may seem I am talking to myself because I am.

Objective : To install a complete dev environment of Python + Django + IDE on Windows XP or Vista. I say Vista because I have done it on Vista and the steps are same. It might even work on Windows 7.

foreword: While django tutorial and instructions are great. this is much concise and includes stuff like setting up pydev (eclipse IDE + python development).

1. First and foremost install Python 2.x (note dont install 3.x as its not compatible with Django)
We dont need Active Python blah blah. Just the http://Python.org .msi file listed which is the installer.
then do the OS environment settings using my own tip at http://vangel.3ezy.com/archives/72-Python-on-Windows-XpVista-or-Windows-7-setting-python-path.html . in short we just need to add the path to the python executable under the system environment variables in %PATH%.

2. Install Subversion for Windows most likely Tortoise SVN if I haven't already. Then check out the Django SVN copy from the svn url listed at http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/topics/install/#installing-development-version in directory of your choice. doesnt have to be relalted to wherever we installed python since we already setup the %PATH% variable.

3. Install django with a simple command
CD into the django directory (this the only time we'll even need to be in this directory.)

>setup.py install

note: you should not need to enter python setup.py... if you setup the %PATH% and installed the python correctly. now if no errors happened we see a bunch of files being listed as being copied and stuff. blah blah will finish. and back to command prompt. Note: on vista, we MAY need administrator privileges to do all these steps and in future. Easiest shortcut way is to get Alleviated Command Prompt. To do that Click Run > type "cmd" and press ctrl+shit+enter. then do everything.

4. Database: Now django is installed and ready we need database. I skip database for now because in latest python 2.5+ and django we already have SQLite3 included. This is good enough for you to start development or learning. So proceeding

5. Site-packages. Often you will see django refer to site-packages and most of the documentation is easier for linux/unix users to follow. so where is this site packages. its where we installed Python not django. in the sub directory for e.g. c:\python\Lib\site-packages\ there is another similar directory C:\python\libs , nothing to do with django or site-packages, which I click accidentally almost every time. arg! So if you see a Django folder in site-packages then django installed correctly. Do a quick test by doing this in command prompt.
In command prompt
>python
>> import django # we are in python shell
If we see no messages that means our django is ready. Else we'll see errors. go jfgi.

all ok?
Moving on.

6. Time to test by starting the django server.
Goto the page at django tutorial http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.2/intro/tutorial01/#intro-tutorial01
to setup and empty project. or you can follow below replacing the example with your own correct paths. The gist is this.

we cd into any directory (not python or django) say I use C:\temp
Here I enter the full path to django-admin.py installation (remember the site packages?) so i can setup a test project something like this
C:\temp>c:\python\Lib\site-packages\django\bin\django-admin.py startproject mytestsite

afer we run it we'll be back to prompt with no messages which "should indicate success". The problem is if you use the wrong django-admin.py from say the django svn directory etc to somehow run it we wont get any error. It will still run and do the job but it will seriously difficult later to figure out what you did wrong. So make sure the path of django-admin.py is site-packages. We can ofcourse create project files anywhere on the system. So now we see if we can start out django web server.

7. the web server: CD into the new project directory we just created. It has all the necessary files in it.
do the command
>cd mytestsite
..\mytestsite>python manage.py runserver

the server will start and display something like
Development server is running at

there will be no command prompt but dont close the wondow or the web server will switch off. Leave the CMD window as is and in your favorite browser go the url as displayed in the line above at the end . e.g. http://127.0.0.1:8080/

the webpage that opens will declare your success or failure in the quest. No webpage? go over the steps above again and read further into the details of every step at http://djangoproject.com

We continue with the quest to setup our IDE with pydev in next article.

Python on Windows Xp/Vista or Windows 7 setting python path

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:22:25 -0700

Isnt it cool that on posix systems things are just ready for you . I mean typing python immeditaely brings up Python interpreter. Not so in windows.

After installing Python and your favorite framework you will realize that typing Python in the command prompt does nothing. Because you need one more additional step in order to fulfill your destiny.

Follow the instruction here http://docs.python.org/using/windows.html.

Specifically the PATH Variable worked for me in Vista under System instead of the User account. well so be it.

Django error - if u'SVN' in version: in setup.py line 70

nospam@example.com (Vangel) — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:04:50 -0700

If you encounter this error when using Django for the first time

Django error - if u'SVN' in version: in setup.py line 70

Django supports Python version 2.3 to 2.6, easily overlooked if you downloaded the default installer for your O.S. which comes with Python 3.1 +.
Installing the correct version i.e. Python 2.5 or 2.6 fixes the problem. In most cases you can leave 3.1 alone as well no need to uninstall. But if you arent gonna use it might as well remove it