Programming My Life - django

Programming My Life

Django Form Basics

Despite using Django for a number of years, I haven’t really worked with Django’s Forms until this week. I needed to create a form to handle a file upload, which has an associated category. The form also had to allow users to create new categories from within the file. When creating a new category, we have some extra data we want associated with the new category. I learned a few things trying to set this up.

First, forms.ModelForm: The fields on this form don't have to map 1-1 to the model. The upload model has a category field, but we need some extra fields on the form when we create new categories that don't exist on the upload model. No problem! I thought I might have to fall back to a standard form since I needed extra fields, but I was able to add them to the form and assign them to the category in the view.

Also, to break up and style different fields in a form, you can individually identify the fields in the template file and style them. So instead of

<formid="id_upload_form" action="{% url 'app_name:upload_file' %}" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  {% csrf_token %}
  {{ form|crispy }}
  <input type="submit" id="idupload_form_submit" class="btn btn-primary mt-4 disabled" value="Upload">
 </form>

We have:

<formid="id_upload_form" action="{% url 'app_name:upload_file' %}" method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">
  {% csrf_token %}

  {{ form.file|as_crispy_field }}
  {{ form.category|as_crispy_field }}
  {{ form.new_category_sources|as_crispy_field }}
  {{ form.new_category_display_name|as_crispy_field }}

  <input type="submit" id="idupload_form_submit" class="btn btn-primary mt-4 disabled" value="Upload">
 </form>

This allowed me to wrap the bottom two fields in a Boostrap accordion in order to hide them from users who are updating a category instead of creating one.

<div class="accordion" id="accordionExample">
  <div class="accordion-item">
    <h2 class="accordion-header" id="headingOne">
      <button class="accordion-button collapsed" type="button" data-bs-toggle="collapse" data-bs-target="#collapseOne" aria-expanded="false" aria-controls="collapseOne">
        Create New Category
      </button>
    </h2>
    <div id="collapseOne" class="accordion-collapse collapse" aria-labelledby="headingOne" data-bs-parent="#accordionExample">
      <div class="accordion-body">
        {{ form.new_category_sources|as_crispy_field }}
        {{ form.new_category_display_name|as_crispy_field }}
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

We already have bootstrap as a dependency, so I like this solution better than adding JavaScript, which I also saw as a way to solve this problem.

Django Tasks - Cronjobs vs Celery

Published: Fri 01 March 2024
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: django

Like my previous vs post, this isn't a showdown. Instead, this post is about matching the solution to the problem. The tl;dr is that Celery is great at what it does, but it requires more infrastructure and setup than I needed to solve my problem.

The Problem to Solve …
[TIL] Using Fixtures with pytest `parametrize`

Published: Thu 08 February 2024
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: python django testing til

For longer than I care to admit, I was running my end to end tests in only Firefox. I thought it would be trivial to add a fixture to have my tests run using multiple browsers. Unfortunately, there isn't an easy way in pytest to use fixtures as parametrized values …

[TIL] Mocking Chained Calls

At work last week, I was asked to write tests for code that reaches out to Twilio's verify service. Here is what that code looks like (from the Twilio docs):

client = Client(account_sid, auth_token)

verification = client.verify \
                     .v2 \
                     .services('VAXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX') \
                     .verifications \
                     .create(to='+15017122661', channel='sms')

I was able to …

Strategies for a Long Running Side Project

Published: Tue 19 December 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: django python

At DjangoConUS 2023, I gave a lighting talk with this title. It was a lot of fun, and I'd suggest you try to give a lightning talk if you haven't before. It's a great way to try giving a talk at a conference without having to commit to a full …
Using SQLite for a Django application on fly.io

Published: Mon 06 November 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: django python

I'd like to run a few small apps I've been developing for learning purposes (to do list, etc.) on a cheap or free platform as a service (PaaS) provider so I don't have to worry about a full deployment setup like I have on my main project. These projects aren't …
Moving from Django Microframework to Django

Published: Mon 30 October 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: django

At DjangoConUS 2019, Carlton Gibson gave a talk called Using Django as a Micro-Framework, where he demonstrated a single file implementation of "Hello, World!" in Django.

At the sprints during DjangoConUS 2023, Paolo Melchiorre showed off an even more minimal version that sparked some great discussion. Specifically, the usage of …
Testing Stripe Integration in Django

Published: Wed 12 July 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: stripe python django testing

I have been using Stripe to process payments for my company AstroVenture (see more context in a previous post here) for a couple of years now, and it has worked great. One thing that took me quite a while to figure out was how to test that we were properly …
Lessons Learned Teaching Undergraduate Astronomy with a Video Game - Testing

Published: Thu 29 June 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: python django testing

This is the fourth and final installment of the series breaking down my talk from DjangoConUS 2022. The first entry covered background information about the project, the second was about using Django Rest Framework, and the third was about infrastructure and deployment.

Before diving in, I'd like to emphasize that …
Lessons Learned Teaching Undergraduate Astronomy with a Video Game - Infrastructure and Deployment

Published: Thu 22 June 2023
By Andrew Mshar

In Django.

tags: python django devops

This is the third installment of the series breaking down my talk from DjangoConUS 2022. The first entry covered background information about the project and the second was about using Django Rest Framework.

First, some important context: if you are a devops engineer, or have a lot of experience with …

The Problem to Solve …