Martin's thoughts on Django

Meine Webseite erstmals Deutsch

Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:59:12 +0100

Meine Webseite ist nun erstmals auch mit einer deutschen Top Level Domain (.de) zu erreichen. Auf dieser Seite werden nach wie vor alle Daten gesammelt, die es auch auf martin-geber.com gibt: Meine Fotos, meine Lesezeichen, meine Musiktitel, etc. Diese Dinge sind natürlich immer noch auf Englisch (mal ehrlich: Wer will schon über 1.100 Fototitel und -beschreibungen übersetzen?). Ich habe jedoch versucht die Oberfläche soweit zu übersetzen. Einiges fehlt noch, wird aber sicher bald kommen.

Wieso martin-geber.DE

Nun mag man sich fragen, wozu ich eine zweite Webseite aufmache, wenn trotzdem der Großteil der Seiten mit englischen Inhalten gefüllt ...

New website finally online

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 16:48:04 +0100

This website has changed a lot. Today I want to show you which techniques and programs I used to create it. I also want to introduce you to some people, who really inspired me very much during creation.

Software

Of cause, this website is fully based on Python, which I use in combination with the best website framework out there: Django.

External Apps

Django provides the ability to use plugable applications. Hence, this website uses some third party applications. Some third party applications are so common that I just want to shortly name them: typogrify, comment_utils (latest version by jezdez ...

Freelancers and Django (DRY-Principle)

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 23:40:30 +0100

In Django you are able to write websites in a minimum of time with a great result. Some developers, nevertheless, don't care about structuring their source as good as Django does. This will cost time and nerves. This entry is meant to show how especially freelancers can save time by thinking before programming, what is a good overall rule. ;)

Two main kinds of Django developers

There are developers, who work only on one project. They use Django to be able to concentrate on the real programming and not too boring stuff, like creating comments and so on. I'll ...

Django Development Version on Windows

Sat, 01 Dec 2007 18:38:26 +0100

I work with the Django development version on my (linux) server. But I work with a Windows Operation System, which is very dump when it comes to SVN Checkouts. There are some solutions for the command line. Hey, honestly the windows command line is annoying, isn't it?

TortoiseSVN

TortoiseSVN is a very easy to use tool for windows, which enables you to download the current Django Development Version.

Installing TortoiseSVN

Go to the TortoiseSVN Download page and select the MSI-file, which fits your windows. Installing is very easy:

Click "Next >" twice
Deselect "Additionally Icon set", "..(GB)..", "..(US).." by clicking ...

Table of Contents: Django Template Filter

Sun, 04 Nov 2007 14:03:38 +0100

I always loved being able to link back a certain chapter of a webpage. Sometimes it is great to just link to the source code of a weblog entry or any other part of it. To enable the visitors of my weblog to do that I wanted to set up some kind of Table of Contents.

I wanted it to be flexible, so that I can adjust whether the table of contents is shown or not. This makes sense, because some articles have just two headlines and a table of contents with two points looks pathetic. So the users would ...

Django signals vs. custom save()-method

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 22:17:40 +0100

The more I read about Django signals (didn't set up one yet), the more I wonder where the difference between a post_save or pre_save signal and the redefinition of the save-method is.

Background Knowledge

In case you know what signals are and you know what I mean with the redefinition of the save-method, skip the following paragraphs.

Sorry, but what are signals?

Signals are actions, which you can listen to. When you, for example, want to get an email the next time someone writes a comment (commonly some spam-robot, but anyway), then you can write a small piece ...

Adding archives information via Django templatetag

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 18:18:13 +0100

It is quite typical for Wordpress-blogs to have all archives in the sidebar. For example "August 2005, September 2005", all linked back to the archives pages. Django, sadly, doesn't have something by default to generate these archive links dynamically.

There is another reason, why people, should want this ability, even though they don't want these links in their sidebar: the <link rel="archives" />-tags. In case you're not interested in this HTML-tag, just ignore the following paragraphs and skip directly to the source code.

`<link rel="archives" />`-HTML-Tag

I love one special little HTML-Tag, which isn ...

Markdown with syntax highlighting in Django

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 21:30:13 +0100

These days I wrote my first Django project (you are currently browsing it). Of course I wanted to post entries into this blog with code snippets. To make the reading experiance better for my readers I decided to use a syntax highlighter. You find thousands of them around the WWW.

The first try: syntaxhighlighter with tiny_mce

I decided to use syntaxhighlighter, which is purly JavaScript-based, so I didn't need to anything. (I was glad, because I was, and still am a Django and Python newbee.) The only thing I had to do was to use either of this to ...

Breadcrumbs in Django with Templates

Thu, 25 Oct 2007 23:33:12 +0100

One great feature of a well-structured website is the navigation bar or location bar, better known as breadcrumbs. It always tells the user, where exactly s/he is currently on the website. (On the website you are currently browsing it is located above the footer, called 'Your way'.)

As a matter of fact, this bar never was easy to create. But when you use Django you don't need one single line of code to achieve your own breadcrumb navigation bar.

A Good Template Structure is the Key

Like everything in Django, you have to consider before you do something ...