Python Daily News

Making XML-RPC calls from a Google App Engine application

Thu, 28 Aug 2008 17:52:11 -0700

Brian M. Clapper: Making XML-RPC calls from a Google App Engine application ["Google App Engine (GAE) is a useful platform on which to develop Python-based web applications. But a GAE application runs in a sandbox that prevents it from opening a socket, which makes the standard Python xmlrpclib module inoperable. Fortunately, there's a simple solution to this problem."]

Keyczar

Sat, 16 Aug 2008 01:12:50 -0700

Steve Weis et al: Keyczar ["Keyczar is an open source cryptographic toolkit designed to make it easier and safer for developers to use cryptography in their applications. Keyczar supports authentication and encryption with both symmetric and asymmetric keys. /.../ Cryptography is easy to get wrong. Developers can choose improper cipher modes, use obsolete algorithms, compose primitives in an unsafe manner, or fail to anticipate the need for key rotation. Keyczar abstracts some of these details by choosing safe defaults, automatically tagging outputs with key version information, and providing a simple programming interface."]

The A-Z of Programming Languages: Python

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 09:14:03 -0700

Naomi Hamilton: The A-Z of Programming Languages: Python ["Our series on the most popular programming languages continues as we chat to Van Rossum, the man behind Python."]

Django on Jython: It's here!

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 23:12:53 -0700

Leo Soto: Django on Jython: It's here! ["That's true: Django works on Jython without any special patch! For anyone interesting in trying it out, I've written the steps on the Jython wiki. For Jython, I think this is great. Not only showing that it is alive and well, but also to expose how much progress has been done in almost every front. Better unicode support, an improved parser, setuptools compatibility, performance improvements, experimental system-restarting support, datetime and decimal support on zxJDBC, are some of the features that enables this milestone. Looking back, it is a lot of impressive work of all Jython developers."]

A new Python book: "Expert Python Programming"

Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:16:03 -0700

Tarek Ziadé: A new Python book: "Expert Python Programming" ["Anyway, this book is intended for developers that already have a background in Python and covers only advanced topics (see the editor details). But as I said, it explains how we develop our applications in Python so topics like continuous integration, documentation, testing, releasing, refactoring, etc. are covered. Managers will also have a good overview of how a Python project can be run and managed, using modern tools like Distributed Version Control Systems (Mercurial for instance) or Buildbot."]

Chandler 1.0!

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 11:13:29 -0700

Mimi Yin: Chandler 1.0! ["We are pleased to announce the release of Chandler 1.0, a “Note-to-Self Organizer” designed for personal and small-group task management and calendaring. Chandler consists of a desktop application and Chandler Hub, a free sharing service and web application. You can also download and run your own Chandler Server."]

Martin von Löwis Receives 2008 Frank Willison Award

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:44:11 -0700

Steve Holden: Martin von Löwis Receives 2008 Frank Willison Award ["Martin von Löwis continues to be a tireless worker on behalf of the Python community. He has been a long-term contributor to the Python core, and regularly answers questions on both the python-dev list and the comp.lang.python newsgroup. A PSF director since 2002 he was also the prime mover in transitioning the Python development infrastructure from SourceForge, and has created several Roundup issue trackers for various areas. He chaired the PSF grants committee, which among other achievements kept Jython alive when its future looked uncertain. I could go on, but you get the idea: when something needs doing, he rarely hesitates to step up to the plate."]

How I Moved My Commercial Django Projects to Newforms-Admin

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:44:11 -0700

Ross Poulton: How I Moved My Commercial Django Projects to Newforms-Admin ["In this post I'm only going to cover how I did the change to Newforms Admin, as the other changes were relatively simple for my projects. I made these changes on a live server, whilst my projects were running. For the volume of changes I had to make, this was very straightforward. I use FastCGI, and because the FastCGI processes were already running I was able to modify the Python code without it taking effect until I restarted FastCGI."]

Django 1.0 alpha released!

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 00:43:52 -0700

James Bennett: Django 1.0 alpha released! ["In accordance with the Django 1.0 release roadmap, tonight we've released the first 'alpha' testing version of Django 1.0. This release includes all of the major features due for inclusion in the final Django 1.0, though some lower-priority items are still scheduled to be included before the 1.0 feature freeze, which will occur with the first beta release next month."]

Launching a High Performance Django Site

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 02:57:23 -0700

Ed Menendez; Launching a High Performance Django Site ["Here's a check list of things you can do to make sure your application can be optimized quickly when you put on your optimization hat. Note, most applications don't need all of this since most applications do not get anywhere near enough traffic to justify even bothering. But if you're lucky enough to need to optimize your Django app, I hope this post can help you."]

A matter of trust

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 05:54:23 -0700

App Engine Fan: A matter of trust ["... assume that you have built a small tool that you would like to share only with family and friends. How could you prevent other, unauthorized people, to just gain access to your app? One solution to the problem is store a list of permitted users in a list (either hardcoded or in a database). This will work if you know exactly who the selected few are. but is also means that you have to administer the list and keep it up to date. A more generic system would be an invitation based access like gmail originally had, but that would mean one would also need to manage those invitations somehow in the database. The following example shows a middle ground -- a simple technology called HMAC to make sure a particular google account is actually supposed to have access."]

Making division in Python faster

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:43:03 -0700

Fredrik Johansson: Making division in Python faster ["Python is clever enough to use the Karatsuba algorithm for multiplication of large integers, which gives an O(n1.6) asymptotic time complexity for n-digit multiplication. This is a huge improvement over the O(n2) schoolbook algorithm when multiplying anything larger than a few hundred digits. Unfortunately, division in Python is not so well equipped: Python uses a brute force O(n2) algorithm for quotients of any size. Several algorithms in mpmath perform several multiplications followed by a single large division; at high precision, the final division can take as much time as all the preceding multiplications together. Division is needed much less often than multiplication, but it is needed nonetheless. Newton's method to the rescue."]

Jython 2.5 Alpha Released!

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:43:12 -0700

Frank Wierzbicki: Jython 2.5 Alpha Released! ["On behalf of the Jython development team, I'm pleased to announce that Jython 2.5a0+ is available for download. See the installation instructions. This is the first alpha release of Jython 2.5 and contains many new features. In fact, because we have skipped 2.3 and 2.4, there are too many to even summarize."]

Simple Top-Down Parsing in Python

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 00:42:58 -0700

Fredrik Lundh: Simple Top-Down Parsing in Python ["In the early seventies, Vaughan Pratt published an elegant improvement to recursive-descent in his paper Top-down Operator Precedence. Pratt's algorithm associates semantics with tokens instead of grammar rules, and uses a simple 'binding power' mechanism to handle precedence levels. /.../ In this article, I'll briefly explain how the algorithm works, discuss different ways to implement interpreters and translators with it in Python, and finally use it to implement a parser for Python's expression syntax."]

Using Python Via The New Java 6 Scripting Engine

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 14:42:51 -0700

Daniel Ostermeier/Jason Sankey: Using Python Via The New Java 6 Scripting Engine ["Do you ever find yourself writing Java code that interacts with external processes and systems, but wish you could use a scripting language more suited to the task? If you have Java 6 available to you, then you are in luck."]

Sprinting to the finish

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:42:54 -0700

Jacob Kaplan-Moss: Sprinting to the finish ["Django 1.0 is about two months away — time to get cracking! To help get everything done by the deadline, we'll be holding a series of sprints. Over the next six weeks we'll hold sprints in Sausalito, Lawrence, Austin, and Portland, and virtually all over the world."]

StaticGenerator for Django Updated (1.3.1)

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 10:41:50 -0700

Jared Kuolt: StaticGenerator for Django Updated (1.3.1) ["Now StaticGenerator leverages Django’s awesome Middleware system to more efficiently create the static files. Just add the Middleware class to settings.py and add a STATIC_GENERATOR_URLS setting /.../"]

Running C and Python Code on The Web

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:41:33 -0700

Atul Varma: Running C and Python Code on The Web ["Last week, Scott Petersen from Adobe gave a talk at Mozilla on a toolchain he’s been creating—soon to be open-sourced—that allows C code to be targeted to the Tamarin virtual machine. /.../ Petersen demonstrated a version of Quake running in a Flash app, as well as a C-based Nintendo emulator running Zelda; both were eminently playable, and included sound effects and music. /.../ Even more impressive, though, is the sheer volume of existing code that can be made to run inside the browser: Petersen showed us the C-compiled versions of Lua, Ruby, Perl, and Python all running on the web in secure Flash sandboxes."]

Guido van Rossum: Google App Engine, Python and Security

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 13:41:18 -0700

Craig Balding: Guido van Rossum: Google App Engine, Python and Security ["In this interview, cloudsecurity.org talks to Guido van Rossum about Python, Google App Engine and security. Guido is the creator of the Python programming language and more recently, Google App Engine team member. His involvement with the App Engine project was pretty late - the code 'was almost ready for release' when he get involved. The security architect of App Engine was primarily project lead, Kevin Gibbs, supported by the rest of the App Engine crew and the Google Security Team."]

Graphite - Enterprise Scalable Realtime Graphing

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 02:54:10 -0700

Chris Davis: Graphite - Enterprise Scalable Realtime Graphing ["Graphite is a highly scalable real-time graphing system. As a user, you write an application that collects numeric time-series data that you are interested in graphing, and send it to Graphite's processing backend, carbon, which stores the data in Graphite's specialized database. The data can then be visualized through graphite's web interfaces. /.../ ... if you need to graph a lot of different things (like dozens of performance metrics from thousands of servers) and you don't necessarily know the names of those things in advance (who wants to maintain such huge configuration?) then Graphite is for you."]

Wikidbase 1.0.b1 released.

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:05:50 -0700

Nick Blundell: Wikidbase 1.0.b1 released. ["After nearly 3 years of development, wikidbase has now reached its first beta release. /.../ The wikidbase concept is based on the view that non-technical users of a database system (i.e. those who are the experts of the nature of the data they handle) should be able to create and evolve their database model over time (i.e. without paying a database expert over and over again to do it). This is particularly relevant to non-profit and charity organisations."]