What's New in Django 1.3

A talk I gave at DJUGL in May of 2011

Transcript

1. Andrew Godwin
   http://www.flickr.com/photos/caroslines/1371200717/
   What's new in Django 1.3?
   

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2. Hi, I'm Andrew.
   Serial Python developer
   Django core committer
   Co-founder of ep.io
   (Python hosting platform)
   

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3. Django: A Very Brief History
   Initial release in 2005
   1.0 released in 2008
   1.3 released March 2011
   

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4. 1.3 was the "bugfix release"
   The plan: No major features, quick release
   

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5. 1.3 was the "bugfix release"
   The plan: No major features, quick release
   The result: 2 major features, 10 months
   

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6. 1.3 was the "bugfix release"
   The plan: No major features, quick release
   The result: 2 major features, 10 months
   We'll get the next one out quicker...
   

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7. New Features
   Class-based views
   Logging
   contrib.staticfiles
   unitttest2
   on_delete
   TemplateResponse
   

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8. Notable Changes
   CSRF on AJAX requests
   Less swearwords
   Translation/i18n improvements
   No more mod_python
   No more XMLField
   render() shortcut
   

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9. Class-Based Views
   Biggest change in 1.3
   Not required for all new views
   Designed to simplify common patterns
   

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10. CBV: Before
    def object_detail(
    request, year, month, day, queryset,
    date_field, month_format='%b',
    day_format='%d', object_id=None,
    slug=None, slug_field='slug',
    template_name=None,
    template_name_field=None,
    template_loader=loader,
    extra_context=None,
    context_processors=None,
    template_object_name='object',
    mimetype=None, allow_future=False
    ):
    

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11. CBV: After
    class AccountDetail(DetailView):
    model = Account
    context_object_name = "account"
    slug_field = "snail"
    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
    context = super(AccountDetail, self)\
    .get_context_data(**kwargs)
    context['books'] = Book.objects.all()
    return context
    

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12. CBV: Simple views too!
    class AccountDetail(TemplateView):
    template_name = "mytempl.html"
    def get_context_data(self, **kwargs):
    return {
    "books": Book.objects.all(),
    "is_evil": True,
    }
    

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13. Other uses
    Refactor common parts into superclasses
    Mixins for adding-on functionality
    Mutate the input or output
    

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14. Logging
    Now actually sensible, not just emails
    Uses standard Python logging library
    Configured using the LOGGING setting
    

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15. LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': True,
    'handlers': {
    'console':{
    'level': 'DEBUG',
    'class': 'logging.StreamHandler',
    },
    'mail_admins': {
    'level': 'ERROR',
    'class': 'django.utils.log.AdminEmailHandler',
    }
    },
    'loggers': {
    'django.request': {
    'handlers': ['mail_admins'],
    'level': 'ERROR',
    },
    'myproject.custom': {
    'handlers': ['console', 'mail_admins'],
    'level': 'INFO',
    }
    }
    }
    

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16. staticfiles
    Lets apps ship with their static files
    View to serve them in development
    ./manage.py collectstatic for production
    

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17. unittest2
    Better than unittest (obviously)
    Many new assertion methods
    Test skipping
    Expected failures
    Much more...
    

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18. unittest2
    Bundled with Django
    Just change:
    import unittest
    from django.utils import unittest
    to
    

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19. on_delete
    Deleting rows just got better!
    Cascade delete (as before)
    Set to NULL
    Raise ProtectedError
    Set to arbitary value
    

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20. TemplateResponse
    A HTTPResponse class you can change
    Template only run at end of middleware
    Change context, or even template
    

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21. TemplateResponse Example
    from django.template.response \
    import TemplateResponse
    def blog_index(request):
    return TemplateResponse(
    request,
    'entry_list.html',
    {'entries': Entry.objects.all()},
    )
    ...
    response.context_data['foo'] = 'bar'
    

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22. CSRF on AJAX requests
    CSRF is a hard, hard problem
    Flash plus 307 redirect = fail
    You'll have to start supplying
    CSRF tokens to your JavaScript
    

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23. Less Swearwords
    Guaranteed, or your money back.
    Also gone: "asshat", "asshead".
    

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24. Translation / i18n
    Marking for ambiguous meanings
    Overrideable translations for apps
    Deprecation of project-wide translations
    

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25. No more mod_python
    It's dead, Jim.
    If you're still using it, move to mod_wsgi
    or gunicorn now, please.
    

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26. No more XMLField
    We're not really sure why it was there
    in the first place.
    

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27. render() shortcut
    Like render_to_response, but :
    Less characters to type
    Uses RequestContext
    Handy for those not on CBV
    

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28. How do you upgrade?
    Should be mostly seamless.
    You'll get warnings for deprecated settings
    (e.g. DATABASE_NAME)
    

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29. What's going to be in 1.4?
    We're not quite sure yet.
    Possible:
    App refactor
    HTML5 doctype
    ORM changes
    

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30. Future features
    GSOC should give us:
    Template engine refactor
    New form rendering
    Schema alteration low-level API
    Composite fields
    

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31. Thank you.
    Andrew Godwin
    @andrewgodwin
    andrew@ep.io
    

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