| Blog Info | Adam Johnson |
|---|---|
| Blog website | Link |
Aug. 13, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
argparse, the standard library module that Django uses for parsing command line options, supports sub-commands. These are pretty neat for providing an expansive API without hundreds of individual commands. Here’s an example of using sub-commands in a Django management command: from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand class Command …
Read MoreJune 22, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
This post is an adapted extract from my book Boost Your Django DX, available now. Django requires every change to model fields and meta classes to be reflected in database migrations. This applies even to things that don’t typically affect the database, such as Field.choices. When iterating on …
Read MoreMay 6, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Harlequin is a Terminal-based SQL IDE by Ted Conbeer. It is pretty popular, with over 2,500 GitHub Stars and counting. It looks like this: Harlequin is built with Textual to give a very interactive experience on the terminal. You can click around its UI and use keyboard shortcuts. I …
Read MoreApril 28, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Here’s a small protection I added to a project a few years ago. I was considering it again since I saw a similar potential bug in a Django middleware. Long live the ModelAdmin instances Django’s admin site is configured by the ModelAdmin class. You register this per model …
Read MoreApril 25, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Copy-paste-tweaking library code feels like a dirty but inevitable programming practice. Often driven by deadlines or other constraints, it seems all projects end up with something copy-pasted in and tweaked for one specific use case. When we find ourselves doing this, it’s essential to consider the long-term maintenance of …
Read MoreApril 24, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Many terminals and text editors support what I’ll call “line number paths” of the form <filename>:<lineno>. Opening that path, whether by clicking or passing to a CLI, opens the given file at that line. Python’s inspect module has a couple of functions that can be combined to …
Read MoreApril 23, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Django’s release notes are extensive and describe nearly all changes. Still, when upgrading between Django versions, you may encounter behaviour changes that are hard to relate to any particular release note. To understand whether a change is expected or a regression, you can use Django’s Git repository to …
Read MoreMarch 23, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Django’s system check framework provides fantastic protection for configuration mishaps. It’s like a targeted linter that runs when you start Django commands. It takes advantage of runtime setup to inspect the true state rather than infer it from the source. I love the system check framework: I have …
Read MoreMarch 20, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
GeoDjango requires the GDAL and GEOS spatial libraries. On macOS, you can use Homebrew to install these, but they won’t be picked up by default since they live in a non-default library directory, /opt/homebrew/lib. Django will fail to start with an exception: Traceback (most recent call last …
Read MoreFeb. 10, 2024 » Adam Johnson » [Archived Version]
Mastodon is a Twitter-like social network with a solid Django community presence. It’s a fantastic online arena for connecting with others, discovering news, discussing issues, and sharing FOMO-inducing conference photos. Historically, Twitter was the primary social network for the Django community, as for much of tech. But since Elon …
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