Simon Willison’s Weblog

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189 items tagged “weeknotes”

I publish weeknotes once every two or three weeks documenting what I've been working on recently.

2021

Weeknotes: Getting my personal Dogsheep up and running again

Visit Weeknotes: Getting my personal Dogsheep up and running again

I gave a talk about Dogsheep at Noisebridge’s Five Minutes of Fame on Thursday. Just one problem: my regular Dogsheep demo was broken, so I ended up building it from scratch again. In doing so I fixed a few bugs in some Dogsheep tools.

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Datasette on Codespaces, sqlite-utils API reference documentation and other weeknotes

Visit Datasette on Codespaces, sqlite-utils API reference documentation and other weeknotes

This week I broke my streak of not sending out the Datasette newsletter, figured out how to use Sphinx for Python class documentation, worked out how to run Datasette on GitHub Codespaces, implemented Datasette column metadata and got tantalizingly close to a solution for an elusive Datasette feature.

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Apply conversion functions to data in SQLite columns with the sqlite-utils CLI tool

Visit Apply conversion functions to data in SQLite columns with the sqlite-utils CLI tool

Earlier this week I released sqlite-utils 3.14 with a powerful new command-line tool: sqlite-utils convert, which applies a conversion function to data stored in a SQLite column.

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Weeknotes: datasette-remote-metadata, sqlite-transform --multi

I mentioned Project Pelican (still a codename until the end of the embargo) last week. This week it inspired a new plugin, datasette-remote-metadata.

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Weeknotes: sqlite-transform 1.1, Datasette 0.58.1, datasette-graphql 1.5

Work on Project Pelican inspires new features and improvements across a number of different projects.

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Weeknotes: Fun with Unix domain sockets

A small enhancement to Datasette this week: I’ve added support for proxying via Unix domain sockets.

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Django SQL Dashboard 1.0

Visit Django SQL Dashboard 1.0

Earlier this week I released Django SQL Dashboard 1.0. I also just released 1.0.1, with a bug fix for PostgreSQL 10 contributed by Ryan Cheley.

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Weeknotes: sqlite-utils updates, Datasette and asgi-csrf, open-sourcing VIAL

Some work on sqlite-utils, asgi-csrf, a Datasette alpha and we open-sourced VIAL.

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Joining CSV and JSON data with an in-memory SQLite database

Visit Joining CSV and JSON data with an in-memory SQLite database

The new sqlite-utils memory command can import CSV and JSON data directly into an in-memory SQLite database, combine and query it using SQL and output the results as CSV, JSON or various other formats of plain text tables.

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Weeknotes: New releases across nine different projects

A new release and security patch for Datasette, plus releases of sqlite-utils, datasette-auth-passwords, django-sql-dashboard, datasette-upload-csvs, xml-analyser, datasette-placekey, datasette-mask-columns and db-to-sqlite.

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Weeknotes: Docker architectures, sqlite-utils 3.7, nearly there with Datasette 0.57

This week I learned a whole bunch about using Docker to emulate different architectures, released sqlite-utils 3.7 and made a ton of progress towards the almost-ready-to-ship Datasette 0.57.

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Weeknotes: Spinning back up on Datasette

I’ve been somewhat distracted from Datasette for the past couple of months, thanks to my work on VIAL and the accompanying open source project django-sql-dashboard. This week I scraped back some time to work on Datasette.

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Weeknotes: Velma, more Django SQL Dashboard

Matching locations for Vaccinate The States, fun with GeoJSON and more improvements to Django SQL Dashboard.

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Django SQL Dashboard

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I’ve released the first non-alpha version of Django SQL Dashboard, which provides an interface for running arbitrary read-only SQL queries directly against a PostgreSQL database, protected by the Django authentication scheme. It can also be used to create saved dashboards that can be published or shared internally.

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Adding GeoDjango to an existing Django project

Work on VIAL for Vaccinate The States continues.

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Weeknotes: Vaccinate The States, and how I learned that returning dozens of MB of JSON works just fine these days

Visit Weeknotes: Vaccinate The States, and how I learned that returning dozens of MB of JSON works just fine these days

On Friday VaccinateCA grew in scope, a lot: we launched a new website called Vaccinate The States. Patrick McKenzie wrote more about the project here—the short version is that we’re building the most comprehensive possible dataset of vaccine availability in the USA, using a combination of data collation, online research and continuing to make a huge number of phone calls.

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Weeknotes: The Aftermath

Some tweets that effectively illustrate my week:

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Porting VaccinateCA to Django

Visit Porting VaccinateCA to Django

As I mentioned back in February, I’ve been working with the VaccinateCA project to try to bring the pandemic to an end a little earlier by helping gather as accurate a model as possible of where the Covid vaccine is available in California and how people can get it.

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Animated choropleth of vaccinations by US county

Visit Animated choropleth of vaccinations by US county

Last week I mentioned that I’ve recently started scraping and storing the CDC’s per-county vaccination numbers in my cdc-vaccination-history GitHub repository. This week I used an Observable notebook and d3’s TopoJSON support to render those numbers on an animated choropleth map.

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Weeknotes: SpatiaLite 5, Datasette on Azure, more CDC vaccination history

Visit Weeknotes: SpatiaLite 5, Datasette on Azure, more CDC vaccination history

This week I got SpatiaLite 5 working in the Datasette Docker image, improved the CDC vaccination history git scraper, figured out Datasette on Azure and we closed on a new home!

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Weeknotes: django-sql-dashboard widgets

Visit Weeknotes: django-sql-dashboard widgets

A few small releases this week, for django-sql-dashboard, datasette-auth-passwords and datasette-publish-vercel.

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Weeknotes: tableau-to-sqlite, django-sql-dashboard

Visit Weeknotes: tableau-to-sqlite, django-sql-dashboard

This week I started a limited production run of my new backend for Vaccinate CA calling, built a tableau-to-sqlite import tool and started working on a subset of Datasette for PostgreSQL and Django called django-sql-dashboard.

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Weeknotes: Datasette and Git scraping at NICAR, VaccinateCA

This week I virtually attended the NICAR data journalism conference and made a ton of progress on the Django backend for VaccinateCA (see last week).

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Trying to end the pandemic a little earlier with VaccinateCA

Visit Trying to end the pandemic a little earlier with VaccinateCA

This week I got involved with the VaccinateCA effort. We are trying to end the pandemic a little earlier, by building the most accurate database possible of vaccination locations and availability in California.

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Cross-database queries in SQLite (and weeknotes)

I released Datasette 0.55 and sqlite-utils 3.6 this week with a common theme across both releases: supporting cross-database joins.

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Weeknotes: Finally, an intro video for Datasette

Visit Weeknotes: Finally, an intro video for Datasette

My big project this week was this Video introduction to Datasette and sqlite-utils. I recorded the video a few weeks ago in advance of FOSDEM, but this week I put together the annotated version. I’m really happy with it, and I’ve added it to the datasette.io homepage as a starting point for helping people understand the project.

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Weeknotes: Mostly messing around with map tiles

Most of what I worked on this week was covered in Serving map tiles from SQLite with MBTiles and datasette-tiles. I built two new plugins: datasette-tiles for serving map tiles, and datasette-basemap which bundles map tiles for zoom levels 0-6 of OpenStreetMap. I also released download-tiles for downloading tiles and bundling them into an MBTiles database.

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Weeknotes: datasette-leaflet, datasette-plugin cookiecutter upgrades

This week I shipped Datasette 0.54, sent out the latest Datasette Newsletter and then mostly worked on follow-up projects.

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Drawing shapes on a map to query a SpatiaLite database (and other weeknotes)

Visit Drawing shapes on a map to query a SpatiaLite database (and other weeknotes)

This week I built a Datasette plugin that lets you query a database by drawing shapes on a map!

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Weeknotes: Still pretty distracted

Not a lot to report this week. U.S. politics continues to make it extremely difficult to focus on anything substantial.

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