Simon Willison’s Weblog

Represent. Andrei Scheinkman and Derek Willis describe how they built the NYTimes Represent feature using GeoDjango and PostGIS. # 29th December 2008, 10:10 pm

Represent and GeoDjango. The NYTimes new Represent application is built on GeoDjango. # 20th December 2008, 9:07 pm

Integrating Facebook Connect with Django in 15 minutes. Django authentication middleware that calls the Facebook REST API using a cookie set by Facebook Connect and checks if that person is your Facebook friend. Despite most of the magic happening on the server you still need Facebook’s JavaScript to set that cookie in the first place. # 17th December 2008, 1:18 pm

ETags And Modification Times In Django. Part of Malcolm’s series of tutorials on implementing advanced HTTP concepts in Django. # 13th December 2008, 9:49 am

Lisa Simpson—crossword fan and ... Django developer? The Django Pony strikes again. # 19th November 2008, 4:48 pm

Django 1.0.2 released. An update to last week’s 1.0.1 release, which I failed to link to. 1.0.2 mainly fixes some packaging issues, while 1.0.1 contains “over two hundred fixes to the original Django 1.0 codebase”. The team are holding up the promise to move to a regular release cycle after 1.0. # 19th November 2008, 8:46 am

The new Lawrence.com. The world’s best local entertainment website, relaunched on Django 1.0 with an accompanying substantial redesign. # 18th November 2008, 2:25 pm

Secrets of the Django ORM. An undocumented (and unsupported) method of poking a Django QuerySet’s internal query to add group_by and having clauses to a SQL query. # 8th November 2008, 11:49 pm

What’s New in Python 2.6 (via) Python 2.6 final has been released (the last 2.x version before 3.0). multiprocessing and simplejson (as json) are now in the standard library, any backwards compatible 3.0 features have been added and the official docs are now powered by Sphinx (used by Django 1.0 as well). There’s plenty more. # 2nd October 2008, 11:47 am

Using the New MySQL Query Profiler. Extremely powerful new feature in MySQL 5.0.37. Definitely something for the Django debug toolbar. # 1st October 2008, 1:20 am

Decorator to limit request rates to individual views. Neat piece of code for public facing web APIs written in Django. Update: some smart criticisms in the comments. # 24th September 2008, 1:13 pm

bpgsql. Barry Pederson’s pure Python PostgreSQL client library now ships with a Django backend. # 23rd September 2008, 11:42 am

RestView—a class for creating a view that dispatches based on request.method (via) I finally got around to writing up a simple approach I’ve been using for REST-style view functions in Django that dispatch based on request.method. # 21st September 2008, 8:47 pm

Introducing the Django Debug Toolbar. Another project inspired by DjangoCon: a component based debugging toolbar for Django. I like the architecture so far. # 21st September 2008, 6:32 pm

Django version 1.1 roadmap. Django 1.1 is due out in March, but the deadline for feature proposals is November the 7th. # 20th September 2008, 7:17 pm

Django’s release process. Django is moving to time-based releases, with minor releases (new features but no backwards incompatible changes) approximately every six months. # 20th September 2008, 7:16 pm

DjangoCon and learning from Zope 2. Mark Ramm presented probably the most thought-provoking talk at DjangoCon. He’s started writing it up as a series of posts. # 17th September 2008, 11:25 pm

YouTube Playlist: DjangoCon 2008 Sessions. YouTube’s tag and search indexes appear to lag behind the main site by quite a while; this appears to be the definitive index page for videos of talks at DjangoCon. # 16th September 2008, 4:50 am

YouTube: djangocon tag. Google have started posting videos of presentations at DjangoCon on YouTube. # 16th September 2008, 2:43 am

Documents Reveal Django Pony, Caught In Tail Of Lies. whytheluckystiff. Enough said. # 15th September 2008, 3:33 pm

Kevin Teague explains the Python packaging ecosystem. The distinction between setuptools, PyPI, distutils, eggs, easy_install, pkg_resources and zc.buildout used to make my head spin. Kevin Teague’s outstanding explanation made it all make sense. # 15th September 2008, 2:06 pm

django-batchadmin (via) Seriously classy reusable Django app that adds batch editing (multiple delete by default, with hooks to add your own custom batch actions) to the Django admin changelist screen, using best practice techniques of sub-classing ModelAdmin and hence requiring no patches to Django core itself. # 15th September 2008, 10:46 am

Django snippets: Orderable inlines using drag and drop with jQuery UI. Code example from my PyCon tutorial on customising the Django admin interface. # 13th September 2008, 12:19 pm

djangopony.com (via) “Magic that can’t be removed” # 13th September 2008, 12:10 pm

The TimeToLead.eu technical stack: Django and Flex. Nice case study of a site using Django’s i18n support along with django-rosetta. # 11th September 2008, 8:33 pm

Hugely informative thread on multi-db support in Django. I brain-dumped some ideas for a Django multi-database connection API on the developer list, and got a ton of smart push-back from people who’ve been there and have the scars to prove it. # 10th September 2008, 11:31 pm

The web framework for ponies. At DjangoCon Cal Henderson suggested that Django should get a mascot with “magical powers”. Brian Veloso obliges. # 9th September 2008, 11:59 pm

django-html. A small project I’m working on to make Django behave better with regards to HTML v.s. XHTML. # 9th September 2008, 11:59 pm

Django snippets: server with debugging backdoor. Six lines of code that uses spawning to fire up a Django server on port 8000 and a remote interactive interpreter backdoor on port 8001, so you can interogate the state of your server within the same process. # 8th September 2008, 10:15 pm