Recent Posts (Page 3)

Git: undo a pull

Okay, so you just ran git pull on a branch, and something broke, so you want to undo it. Here are two ways how.

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Python: spy for changes with sys.monitoring

Python 3.12 introduced sys.monitoring, a new framework for “monitoring” tools like debuggers and profilers to hook into. It provides fine-grained control so tools can listen only to certain events on specific lines of code. The framework came from PEP 669, thanks to Mark Shannon of the Faster CPython team.

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Python: create temporary files and directories in unittest

Sometimes, tests need temporary files or directories. You can do this in Python’s unittest with the standard library tempfile module. Let’s look at some recipes to do so within individual tests and setUp().

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Django: Fail in templates with {% url '' %}

Previously, I covered using 1/0 to crash Python within minimal typing, useful to quickly answer questions like “does the code even get here?”. Recently, I wanted to do the same in Django templates, to trace if a given template was even being rendered, and under which code paths.

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Django Quiz 2024

Yesterday, I held another quiz at the December edition of Django London. The quiz is a regular tradition at our meetup, a way of having a more relaxed event in December and giving away some nice prizes. This was the sixth quiz that I’ve presented, and the seventh overall.

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Django: launch pdb when a given SQL query runs

Here’s another technique for using pdb within Django. I will add this to the new debugging chapter of Boost Your Django DX in a future update.

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Django: launch pdb in templates with a custom {% breakpoint %} tag

In my recent Boost Your Django DX update, I added a new chapter on debuggers. Here’s an extra technique I didn’t finish in time for the update, but I will include it in the next one.

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Django: fix a view using pdb with breakpoint()

Python’s breakpoint() function opens its debugger, pdb, which pauses the program and allows you to inspect and modify things. Let’s look at an example of using it within a Django view, from a sample project included in Boost Your Django DX.

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Django: find ghost tables without associated models

Heavy refactoring of models can leave a Django project with “ghost tables”, which were created for a model that was removed without any trace in the migration history. Thankfully, by using some Django internals, you can find such tables.

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Git: count commits with rev-list

git rev-list lists details about commits (also known as “revisions”, hence the name). Its --count option outputs the count of commits in the given range. Pass it @, the short alias for HEAD, to count commits on the current branch:

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Django-related Deals for Black Friday 2024

Here are some Django-related deals for this year’s Black Friday (29th November) and Cyber Monday (1st December), including my own.

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Boost Your Django DX updated again

I have just released the second update to Boost Your Django DX, my book of developer experience (DX) recommendations for Django projects. This update contains a new chapter, changes some recommended tools, and upgrades to Python 3.13 and Django 5.1. Overall, the book is 45 pages longer, now totalling 326!

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Django: Introducing Djade, a template formatter

Happy DjangoCon US 2024 to you. Whilst I am not there, I have adopted the spirit of the season and got to work hacking together a new tool.

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Git: find when a commit was reverted or reapplied

Git doesn’t store reversion links between commits. It only relies on commit messages to track this information. When you run git revert, the default message includes a line about the reverted commit:

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Python: my new uv setup for development

uv is a new, fast Python packaging tool. Since the August 20 update, uv can now manage both versions of Python and Python-powered tools.

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Django: speed up tests slightly by disabling update_last_login

Django’s test client provides two methods to log in a user: login() and force_login(). The latter one is faster because it bypasses the authentication backend, including password hashing, and just sets a session to have the user logged in. Typically, you’d want to use it in setUp() like this:

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Django: hoist repeated decorator definitions

Django provides us with a rich set of view decorators. In this post, we’ll look at a technique for hoisting repeated use of these decorators to reduce repetition.

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Django: a pattern for settings-configured API clients

Here’s an example of a common pattern in Django projects:

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Django: build a Microsoft Teams bot

Recently, I built a Microsoft Teams bot for a client, inside their Django project. It wasn’t fun or easy, but the experience did increase my resiliency as a developer. I also went into this forewarned by my wife, a product manager also known as “the integration queen”, who has experienced the difficulties of the Teams API first-hand.

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Git: generate statistics with shortlog

git shortlog generate statistics about the commits in a repository, intended to help generate project release notes. By default, it groups commits by author, but it can use other fields too. Use it for a more powerful dissection of a repository than tools like GitHub’s Insights tab.

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Git: avoid reset --hard, use reset --keep instead

When I started learning Git, I found many references covering two ways to undo commits with git reset:

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Django: avoid “useless use of .all()

Here’s a little ORM pet peeve of mine that may deepen your understanding of how QuerySets work.

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Django: rotate your secret key, fast or slow

Django’s SECRET_KEY setting is used for cryptographic signing in various places, such as for session storage and password reset tokens. This makes keeping it secure a high priority since an attacker with the key could forge things like password reset tokens.

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Python: profile total memory allocated with tracemalloc

tracemalloc is Python’s standard library module for tracking memory allocations. It has many bells and whistles for detailed analysis, allowing you to slice allocations by file and line or compare snapshots. But for simple purposes, displaying the total memory allocated is sufficient, which is what this recipe does:

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Django: create sub-commands within a management command

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:

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