In my opinion, the concepts behind Django's model forms can be listed in just six (6) bullets. The bullets I've marked in bold at the top are the topic of this blog post, while the two of these that were covered in a previous blog post on Django ...

In the summer of 2010 Frank Wiles of Revsys exposed me to what I later called the "Easy Form Views" pattern when creating Django form function views. I used this technique in a variety of places, including Django Packages and the documentation for django-uni-form (which is rebooted as django-crispy-forms). At ...

Because of the ubiquitousness of reStructuredText in the lives of Python developers and the advocacy of it, it's not uncommon for people to assume we used it to write our book. However, that's not really the case.

The short Answer is we used:

• reStructuredText (RST)
• Google Documents
• Apple ...

I've heard good things about filepicker.io, which is a service that makes file uploading a much better experience. Unfortunately, the Django package for filepicker.io doesn't work with South. When I try to create a migration using the filepicker.io field using code like the following...

# products ...

I feel like I'm dreaming, but we're on our way to Europe!

A few weeks Audrey and I decided to move. While looking at possible rentals or even mortgages, we were idly (dreaming really... still paying off debts incurred from last year) looking at how much a room ...

Since I was a child I wanted to be a published author. I've dreamt of people reading my book. While one could say that dream was fulfilled when we launched the e-book version in January, it's not the same as seeing the printed copy. Today I got to ...

With the help of fellow Python developer Matt Harrison's excellent Ebook Formatting: KF8, Mobi & EPUB, we managed to create pretty decent looking Kindle and ePub versions of Two Scoops of Django.

One of many things we did was focus on providing an excellent table of contents. Of course we ...

In my opinion, the concepts behind Django's non-model forms can be listed in just three (3) bullets:

• Forms render HTML.
• Forms are "just" Python constructs.
• Forms validate dictionaries (Python's Key/Value structure).

Let's dig in!

# myapp/forms.py ...

One of the patterns we get positive feedback for mentioning in our book is overloading form fields.

The problem this pattern handles is the use case of when we have a model with a field(s) that allows for blank values, how do we force users to enter values?

For ...

This is Part III in a series of blog posts about PyCon US 2013. The goal is to provide a handy reference guide for first time attendees of the world's largest Python conference. Part I was mostly about tutorials, Part II was mostly about the first day of talks ...

In January Audrey Roy and I launched a book about Django called Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5. We decided to not use PayPal. Here's why:

After thirty four days of hard work, Audrey Roy and I are proud to announce that we've released the beta of Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5. It's been a monumental effort, a labor of love, and we hope you find our efforts worthy ...

This is Part II in a series of blog posts about PyCon US 2013. The goal is to provide a handy reference guide for first time attendees of the world's largest Python conference. Part I was mostly about tutorials, this post will be about registration and the first day ...

New to Python and thinking about going to the upcoming PyCon US for the first time? You know, that big Python conference taking place near San Francisco in March?

Or perhaps you signed up already and are getting worried about being overwhelmed by hundreds of tutorials, talks, and activities?

No ...

The launch of the Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5 book has gone pretty well. The response has been almost entirely positive and sales have been pretty brisk. We've gotten a ton of great, constructive editorial feedback, which we're sorting through as we race ...

We (Audrey Roy and I) wrote a book on Django! It's called Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5, and you can buy it right now in e-book (PDF) form on the website: http://django.2scoops.org.

Django, like any framework, has tips, tricks, and pitfalls ...

I'm one of those people who not only likes to make New Year's Resolutions, I like to blog about them.

Tarek Ziade has a habit of ending the year with a Python-themed meme. I've matched his meme the times he previousstarted it, and as you can tell from the title of this blog post I'm matching him yet again.

This blog post got started with a tweet.

That tweet got retweeted a lot by developers. And system administrators. And database administrators. And any creative type.

As of December 7th, 2012, it had been retweeted over 500 times, a personal best. Obviously I struck a chord that resonated with a ...

One virtue of Django Class Based Views (CBVs) is that they come with pretty good default settings. The virtue of this is you can really pare your code down in size and complexity.

For example, here is an implementation of CBVs based on a straight-forward Django model , stuffage.models.Stuff ...

Backstory: On Saturday, November 17, 2012 Audrey Roy and I decided to participate in the Petcentric hackathon, a Los Angeles area Pet-themed product/coding contest held at Amplify. We arrived a bit late, but armed with Audrey's idea of creating a pet based reference sheet for owners, pet sitters ...

Today I decided to use the Django class based view (CBV) CreateView, but I wanted to avoid duplications and submit to the view from the front page of a site. The reason was I needed a simple newsletter signup form. This is what I cooked up and should work for ...

Yet again, myself, Audrey Roy, and a small but elite cadre of volunteers are feverishly at work putting together another Los Angeles open source event. Our last effort went smashingly well, and like any good engineer, we're ready to scale up - this time to 150 attendees!

LA Open Source ...

The PyCon US 2013 call for papers (CFP) ends tomorrow, September 28th, 2012. We need more talk and tutorial submissions. Talks are 30 or 45 minute efforts in front of the PyCon audience and are recorded for posterity. Tutorials are three hours long and are given to attendees who have ...

I'm an open source developer. I use Python, Django, PostgreSQL, JQuery, MongoDB, Memcached, and Redis. I push production code to Linux servers.

And yet:

• My laptop runs Apple's Mac OS X.
• My primary editor is Sublime Text.
• My production servers are provided mostly by Heroku.
• All my sites ...

Hi, I'm Daniel Greenfeld. You might know me from my blog. I'm here to talk to you about a very import subject: Submitting your talk early to PyCon US.

Last year there were hundreds of talks were submitted for just a very few speaking slots. Unpaid volunteers labored ...

A little over three months ago I blogged about my preferred requirements list. It's now nearly the eve of Django Dash, and I feel it's time to update the list. I'm going to bump the versions on some of the existing packages and add some new ones ...

I'm terribly proud of what was accomplished last night: A car-sized robot weighing a whopping 8,580 pounds (3,893 kg) was landed on Mars. It is packed with scientific packages that will expand our knowledge of Mars, and has the power to use them for at least 14 ...

For 2012, DjangoCon US has moved to Washington, DC, and everyone is invited! If you need financial support to get there, the Django Software Foundation and PyLadies have paired with a number of forward thinking sponsors to help get you there. All genders are eligible for assistance, so don't ...

Having too many custom exceptions on a project can be a pain, but a few choices ones are really nice. The problem is that in complex libraries having to import both functions and exceptions becomes a drag. To mitigate having to remember to import custom exceptions, this is a handy ...

Today I wanted to use the Django Class Based View (CBV) UpdateView but without a slug identifier in the URL. For example, instead of /profiles/pydanny/ I would go to /my-crazy-profile/. Also, I needed to force authentication.

I've done this with Django functional views a few times times, but ...

On July 15th, 2012, at the July LA Hackathons Open Source event, over 60 Python, Django, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, PHP, JavaScript, Node.js, Perl, and Clojure developers arrived to work on a variety of projects. We went from 10 AM to 10 PM, and there was much coding and ...

I have a client who wanted their entire unlaunched public content site quickly but temporarily blocked for a short period of time. He wanted a universal password so he could send the site to reviewers, done quickly, and nothing else. In a few days the site will launch, and even ...

The second day of PyCon Philippines 2012 had a really good turnout. My unofficial estimate is that we had about 90% of the attendees from the first day attend (with the unfortunate exception of most of the faculty and students of Agoo Computer College).

The day started with...

PyCon Philippines 2012 (PyCon PH) happened just this past weekend at the University of the Philippines Diliman (UP Diliman) campus in Quezon City, which is part of Metro Manila.

I can assure you that PyCon PH was an wonderful, amazing, humbling experience. I'm hoping that this post and others ...

PyCon Philippines 2012, set to occur on June 30 and July 1, is the first Python programming conference held in the Philippines. PyCon is a volunteer run effort that brings together Python developers from a variety of backgrounds and skill levels into a friendly, cooperative environment in order to educate ...

Yesterday I showed how to implement a simple email form for Django using Class Based Views. Today I'm going to extend yesterday's work to use the excellent RECAPTCHA service to help reduce spam content.

This version requires pip installing the following into your virtualenv.

• pip install django-crispy-forms so ...

Here's a simple FormView Class Based Views for Django. Here is a sample of how to do one as a simple email form. There is no CAPTCHA in this example, that's the topic of a future blog post.

This version requires the following packages pip installed into your ...

On May 12th, 2012, over 50 Python, C++, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, and Node.js developers arrived to code on a variety of projects. It was awesome! Tons of open source projects saw contributions, and people across languages and frameworks worked together.

You should go to DjangoCon Europe in lovely Zurich, Switzerland. Here are 10 reasons why:

I've been very happy with Pelican as a blog engine so far, and haven't even moved off the sample theme. There's just been one problem: Myself and others have had a lot of trouble reading the code snippets.

I didn't have time to cook up a ...

First off, out of the box, Django lets you construct API responses with a little work. All you need to do is something like this:

# Copied from https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/topics/class-based-views/#more-than-just-html
from django import http
from django.utils import simplejson as json

class JSONResponseMixin ...

Today I'm starting a new project. I'm working as fast as I can and hope to launch on Friday. What are my package dependencies?

This is a day long coding event in Los Angeles for Open Source developers of all languages and skill levels to come and code like fiends. They'll be joined by dozens of either really smart coders or nice people like me. Sponsors are providing food, drinks, venue, and more ...

This year in June, the European edition of DjangoCon is going to be held in lovely Zurich, Switzerland. It is my great fortune and delight to announce that Audrey and I will be attending. Hooray!

Needless to say, we're extremely excited. My trip to Europe in 2007 was an ...

On October 16th, 2011, which was one hundred and sixty-four days before I published this post, I resolved to get myself onto the Longest Streak list of Calendar About Nothing. Today, with this blog post, I've managed to do just that - get on the Longest Streaks.

Calendar About Nothing ...

A few months ago me and my fiancee, Audrey Roy, launched our start up, Consumer Notebook. It's a Python powered product comparison site that combines the best features of Open Comparison, Yelp, Consumer Reports, and Pinterest. We've worked day and night to make it better, with countless members ...

This is one of those challenging posts to write. The people whose projects I'm going to describe have put in a lot of dedicated, hard work to overcome a challenging subject. Writing an OAuth consumer is a hard problem and writing an OAuth provider is an even harder problem ...

In mid-November me and my fiancee, Audrey Roy began our startup. We had been frustrated with trying to do on-line product research and came up with an idea to take the lessons learned from Django Packages / Open Comparison and apply them to a commercial effort. The result has been Consumer ...

Here I was thinking that this year's PyCon wasn't going to be so busy because I didn't submit a talk or tutorial. Ha! What the heck was I thinking?

Here's what I've already got in the works.

Me and Audrey have been working hard on Consumer Notebook, a Python/Django based project. We submitted it to PyCon StartUp row and found out this morning we've been accepted. Hooray!

From the PyCon StartUp Row winner's post, here is a little bit of what we're about ...

I started on django-uni-form in January 2009. In order to use Pinax on an internal social network for NASA HQ, we had to render all content, including forms, Section 508 compliant. Rather than rewrite the html for all 50+ forms that existed in the Pinax 0.5.x framework at ...