Articles in Django
Topics related to the Django web development framework.
Review: Django JavaScript Integration: AJAX and jQuery
Posted on April 16th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Reviews,
jQuery,
AJAX
A while back, I was asked to review the book Django JavaScript Integration: AJAX and jQuery, written by Jonathan Hayward, published by www.PacktPub.com. The company is looking for people who have blogged about the topic of the book to write reviews of it on their blogs - as this is a topic I have written about and I was very interested reading a book-length discussion on the topic for free, of course I agreed. If you would like a sampling from the book, a chapter is available for free online (Chapter No.10 - Tinkering Around: Bugfixes, Friendlier Password Input, and a Directory That Tells Local Time). I think this chapter is fairly characteristic of the book as a whole and will give you a good sense of what Hayward has to offer. I think some people would enjoy this book and get something out of it, but my personal reaction was more of disappointment. Overall, I'm glad I didn't pay good money for this book.
Reviewing a Book on jQuery and Django
Posted on March 21st, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Reviews,
jQuery,
AJAX
I got asked to review the book Django JavaScript Integration: AJAX and jQuery from www.PacktPub.com. That constitutes work, and I'm already a busy guy. However, I am quite excited to do it, because it means that basically I get to read the book for free, and it looks really interesting. In the meantime you can follow this link to read a chapter from the book for free (Chapter No.10 - Tinkering Around: Bugfixes, Friendlier Password Input, and a Directory That Tells Local Time). I haven't really had a chance to start reading yet, but I plan to start soon. I'm really excited to see that someone is addressing this topic in depth because of what I see as its key importance to the future of Django.
Django and jQuery Ajax Patterns
Posted on January 30th, 2011 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
jQuery,
AJAX
In a previous article, I talked about the increasing role of Ajax libraries in the development of websites in Django's main target genre (news sites) in light of Django's policy not to "bless" any given popular Javascript library. This is in contrast with Rails's tight integration with the Prototype Javascript library, Rails being the framework Django is most often compared to. My experience with Javascript frameworks is with jQuery, apparently the rising star and most prominent example at the moment. I have found that Django and jQuery are actually able to interoperate quite well, and in this article I will summarize some basic development patterns in using Django together with jQuery.
A Plugin System for Django?
Posted on November 6th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
Topics:
Popular Django CMS
If you're designing a corporate intranet, news website, or dating service, platforms like Django and Rails have PHP beat. They allow for much cleaner design by nature, and hence they scale better, at least conceptually. Facebook, written in PHP, is the big exception, but we as constantly see Facebook struggling to keep up with its volume of traffic, and as we see various security holes come to light in the news, it's apparent that this may be a misfortune for Facebook rather than an advantage for PHP. Of course, Java has a commanding domination of the corporate market, for reasons which are far from obvious. But PHP has a powerful domination in the world of prepackaged web applications, like CMS's such as Joomla, blogs such as Wordpress and forums such as phpBB. I don't think this is entirely due to the fact that PHP is simply so widely supported - I think PHP actually has some significant advantages which make it better for these kinds of applications, and I would like to explore why Django specifically is inherently deficient in this area and how those deficiencies might be circumvented.
Added a Topic Feature
Posted on February 14th, 2010 by
Stephen DeGrace
I just finished adding a Topic feature to my Blog application. The concept is similar to tagging, which for good or for ill I deliberately decided not to implement. The idea is that topics will allow me to more easily connect related articles, which since creating my "Doom Series" I have had the desire to do.
Refactoring Infinite with Link Trees
Posted on November 30th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
There are three new goals I have in terms of where I'm going with this Infinite application (the suite of Django applications that runs this site). One is simple - to add an app for linking to eclectic outside sites, including for use as a blogroll. Another is to create a graphical tree app as an extension of the Django admin which simplifies the process of building menus and adding local content. Going along with that is a way for applications to conveniently list off what links they have available in such a way as to easily interface with the graphical menu tree app. Finally, I want to leverage the capabilities developed to list content for the menu tree to build an extension to TinyMCE to easily link to local content while blogging.
Created a front page app
Posted on November 10th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
I decided to encapsulate the functionality of the front page with its own separate app. There is only one visible change to the way the front page looks and acts, but it is implemented in an entirely different way.
Taskmaster App Available For Download
Posted on November 6th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
I now have my taskmaster application (a program which allows other Django apps to arbitrarily queue tasks for background processing) packaged as a download.
Infinite (Django) and Wordpress: A Comparison
Posted on October 28th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Infinite, the Django application set (I don't want to say "application," because a Django site is actually a set of applications linked by a settings file) that runs infiniterecursion.ca is basically feature complete. This seems like a good time to step back again and consider what I've made.
LinkBacks and Search Added
Posted on October 26th, 2009 by
Stephen DeGrace
Last night I added the last of the originally-planned features for the infiniterecursion.ca web site. The new features are the linkback system and a Search feature.