Empty Thoughts

Eric Holscher just posted a very nice article titled Automating tests in Django. The post goes through how to create integration tests for your Django applications in an automated way through the use of a Middleware that logs the test creation output to a file. It’s a creative approach and certainly very interesting. One additional benefit is that Eric created a screencast to go along with the post that is excellently done.

There is one thing about this approach to testing that doesn’t quite sit right with me and that’s that it seems like the testing process is backwards. If you’re creating tests based on what you have how are you possibly going to cover what’s specified but not implemented properly? It’s the same reason I’m not a fan of doctests. I think they encourage the wrong behavior, especially when often the output your matching to is so complex that the tendency is to just copy and paste from live results. I recognize that a lot of people don’t feel the same way, and perhaps I just need to give the idea more time to sink in.

I really appreciate all of the screencasts that are starting to show up within the Django community. I think it’s a vehicle that a lot of people enjoy and learn well from. I know that I’m certainly looking foward to more screencasts from Eric.

I’m not really sure how I missed out on this. The Pragmatic Programmers has a new offering of Pragmatic Screencasts that cover subjects such as Core Animation, Erlang, Ruby, Active Record, and Expression Engine. At $5 per episode it’s definitely a great buy. I just got the four episodes in the Erlang by Example series and I’m making my way through them. The screencasts are professional, well done, and great resource for get up to speed on a focus subject. I’m looking forward to seeing new topics down the road. Perhaps something on Django? I highly recommend them!

For those of you that enjoy creating screencasts, there’s a new product out there to add to the mix. Vara Software announced their new product ScreenFlow. ScreenFlow is a pretty impressive offering, but it also comes with a pretty impressive price of $99. Although in fairness, ScreenFlow is more than just a screencast recording application. You can also do the post-production editing.

It looks like it will fill a nice space between just publishing your screencast straight out of iShowU or SnapzProX and someone that does post-production in a workhorse like Final Cut Pro.

I’m looking forward to trying it out. I encourage you to check out the impressive screencasts they have produced with the product.

In this screencast I cover converting an existing application to the NewForms-Admin Branch of Django. We will cover hooking the NewForms-Admin into our urls.py module, extracting out the inner Admin class information into a NewForms-Admin class, handling the prepopulate_from, and organizing our admin class information into a separate module.

Downloads

Now available in an Ogg/Theora format!

MP4 Edition (33.0 MB, 21:09, H.264, MP4)

IPod Edition (16.6 MB, 21:09, H.264, MP4)

OGG Edition (34.9 MB, 21:09, Theora, OGG)

Flash Edition – All screencasts are available at ShowMeDo, although not immediately upon publish.

Source Code (44 KB)

Requires the latest version of QuickTime, VLC Media Player, or comparable software capable of playing MP4 container format and the H.264 codec.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available, So please choose the iTunes feed if you want automatic downloads in iTunes. Please show me some iTunes love.

iTunes Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition – Still waiting for it to show up

Regular RSS Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition

Show Notes

NewForms-Admin Branch Wiki Page – The NewForms-Admin documentation on the Django Wiki site.

Django Installation Documentation – Covers how to install Django. You will need to go through similar steps when installing the NewForms-Admin branch.

Using Git with Django Screencast – Excellent screencast that gives a nice introduction to working with Git and Django together.

Source code is available in the Source Code download link above. Apparently a lot of people miss that. The source for the application can be downloaded and used under the MIT License.

Django Screencasts are now available in flash format at ShowMeDo. It took me a while to get everything working on their end, but Ian and team have been wonderful and quite helpful. Speaking of ShowMeDo, they have a bunch of Python and Django videos as well as others. Great stuff. I encourage you to check it out.

In this screencast I cover how to implement application based settings in a way that keeps the application pluggable. Watch this screencast and learn more.

Downloads

Now available in an Ogg/Theora format!

MP4 Edition* (14.1 MB, 9:00, H.264, MP4)

OGG Edition (14.7 MB, 9:00, Theora, OGG)

IPod Edition* (7.2 MB, 9:00, H.264, MP4)

Source Code (40 KB)

*Requires the latest version of QuickTime, VLC Media Player, or comparable software capable of playing MP4 container format and the H.264 codec.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available, So please choose the iTunes feed if you want automatic downloads in iTunes. Please show me some iTunes love.

iTunes Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition – Still waiting for it to show up

Regular RSS Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition

Show Notes

Django Settings Documentation

Source code is available in the Source Code download link above. Apparently a lot of people miss that. The source for the application can be downloaded and used under the MIT License.

In this screencast I cover how to map specific URLs to the Flatpages contrib. There are times when you want the advantages and flexibility of flatpages, but also do not want URL mapping to be open ended and are uncomfortable with the fallback middleware approach. Watch this screencast and learn more.

Downloads

MP4 Edition (23.7 MB, 15:14, H.264, MP4)

OGG Edition (25.2 MB, 15:14, Theora, OGG)

IPod (11.9 MB, 15:14, H.264, MP4)

Requires the latest version of QuickTime, VLC Media Player, or comparable software capable of playing MP4 container format and the H.264 codec.

Feeds Available

iTunes Feeds are available, So please choose the iTunes feed if you want automatic downloads in iTunes. Please show me some iTunes love.

iTunes Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition – Still waiting for it to show up

Regular RSS Feeds

Django Screencasts – MP4 Edition

Django Screencasts – iPod Edition

Show Notes

• Django Documentation on Flatpages

As promised, Brian Rosner, co-host of This Week in Django, has just released a screencast on Using Git with Django. Although this is Brian’s first screencast, he has put together a very professional tutorial. It’s enough to wet your appetite for using Git with Django.

I expect, and hope, that we will see more great screencasts from Brian in the future.

In this screencast I cover NewForms Personalization. Often you have a drop down or some other field in your NewForm that you need to have personalized, or changed based on the logged in user or other instance criteria. This screencast will show you how to accomplish that in your applications.

Source code for the screencast is provided below. Please be sure to read the README file included in the download.

Downloads

Regular (20.8 MB, 13:31, H.264, MP4)

IPod (9.8 MB, 13:31, H.264, MP4)

Source Code (124 KB)

Requires the latest version of QuickTime, VLC Media Player, or comparable software capable of playing MP4 container format and the H.264 codec.

Show Notes

• Django Documentation on NewForms

• Customizing NewForms

• Marty Alchin’s Post that Discusses Keyword Arguments

In this screencast I cover adding custom management commands into your Django applications. Custom management commands are a method of extending Django’s built-in commands that are made available through the manage.py or django-admin.py scripts.

Source code for the screencast is provided below. Please be sure to read the README file included in the download.

Downloads

Regular (64.2 MB, 41:09, H.264, MP4)

IPod (26.6MB, 41:09, H.264, MP4)

Source Code (124 KB)

Requires the latest version of QuickTime, VLC Media Player, or comparable software capable of playing MP4 container format and the H.264 codec.

Show Notes

• Custom Management Commands Cheatsheet

• Django Documentation on Custom Management Commands

• Optparse Python Library

• Registering Custom Commands with Manage.py

• NewForms Generator

P.S. I apologize for the delay in getting this screencast put together. Between Leopard upgrades and health issues time got away from me.

Update

My server was getting hammered with downloads and was unavailable for a while this morning. I’ve moved the downloads to S3 to try to offload some of the impact. Hopefully this will correct the issue. If you experience problems downloading the screencast, please email me.