Using Knockout.JS for the first time

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

I was a little daunted. Having never made a single page Javascript application, I am pretty behind the times on frameworks and new-age-javascript-jitsu.

I looked at Backbone, Ember, Meteor, Backbone.Marionette, etc. etc. etc. These all freak me out, so much extra junk I’m not used to, why do I want to make models and such? I just want simple jQuery stuff as far as I can tell. What hidden magic lies in these libraries? How can it be so useful?

I asked on twitter:

@CKCollab

#Javascript, I still don’t understand why #AngularJS, #CanJS, #EmberJS, whatever are useful. Is there an open source project demonstrating?

So. To learn why these libraries help out so much, I’ll need to dive into it.

Perfect timing

I’m building a large application for a local company right now, it’s going to be a single page application. I researched for a while, since I’ve never made an SPA before, and I was sooo confused! There are so many options and they all have great communities behind them.

The reason I chose Knockout was its simplicity, the tutorials on the site and the small size of the library.

Here’s all I had to do to use it:

gk.addPage = {
    status: ko.observable('Step 1 - Fill out da form!');
}

ko.applyBindings(gk.addPage);

gk.addPage = {

status: ko.observable('Step 1 - Fill out da form!');

}

ko.applyBindings(gk.addPage);

That’s it! Now to modify that I have to do

gk.addPage.status('new data');

1 2	gk.addPage.status('new data');

and it updates on screen! How nice.

#django IRC and excluding django settings with coverage

Posted on March 31, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

I can’t believe how helpful #django, #python, etc. are.

One time I was having trouble with django-tables-2 and the creator just so happened to be there… and he personally helped me! Thanks again bradleyayers!

Today I was asking about how to configure coverage to ignore my django settings file and NED BATCHELDER HIMSELF responds!

<BabySuperman> Can I write a test that covers my entire 
    settings module so coverage can effectively ignore it?
<nedbat> BabySuperman: you can instruct coverage to ignore the 
    settings file if you like
<BabySuperman> nedbat, NED BATCHELDER(sp)?! Uhh... yeah, how do I do that?!
<BabySuperman> i found nose-exclude which does something like I want, 
    but it's for folders and didnt seem to work
<nedbat> BabySuperman: i recommend that you use a .coveragerc file 
    to control coverage.py. then you can exclude the things you want to
<BabySuperman> nedbat, tyvm, I'm in windows but ill google around and 
    figger it out!
<nedbat> BabySuperman: i'm in windows too.  it's still called that.
<BabySuperman> ah no way, kk ty

<BabySuperman> Can I write a test that covers my entire

settings module so coverage can effectively ignore it?

<nedbat> BabySuperman: you can instruct coverage to ignore the

settings file if you like

<BabySuperman> nedbat, NED BATCHELDER(sp)?! Uhh... yeah, how do I do that?!

<BabySuperman> i found nose-exclude which does something like I want,

but it's for folders and didnt seem to work

<nedbat> BabySuperman: i recommend that you use a .coveragerc file

to control coverage.py. then you can exclude the things you want to

<BabySuperman> nedbat, tyvm, I'm in windows but ill google around and

figger it out!

<nedbat> BabySuperman: i'm in windows too. it's still called that.

<BabySuperman> ah no way, kk ty

All I had to do was add the file .coveragerc to the root directory with manage.py and bam, it worked! Here’s the settings I ended up using

[run]
omit = *settings*

[run]

omit = *settings*

Backbone, Underscore and Marionette!

Posted on March 26, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

A client of ours is just as excited as us about new technology, so we want to do a Single Page Application, where as I’ve only ever used Django + Python + Jquery before.

I’ll be reading:

https://github.com/addyosmani/backbone-fundamentals/blob/gh-pages/chapters/02-fundamentals.md

Over and over tonight!

It seems like we’ll go with Marionette to extend Backbone and we’ll use Underscore’s templating. Pretty pumped!

Quick jquery snippet to make bootstrap tabs remember where they were!

Posted on March 10, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

  /*
   * Make bootstrap pages remember which tab they were on!
   */
  $('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function (e) {
    //save the latest tab; use cookies if you like 'em better:
    localStorage.setItem('lastTab', $(e.target).attr('href'));
  });

  //go to the latest tab, if it exists:
  var lastTab = localStorage.getItem('lastTab');
  if (lastTab) {
      $('a[href="' + lastTab + '"]').tab('show');
  }

* Make bootstrap pages remember which tab they were on!

$('a[data-toggle="tab"]').on('shown', function (e) {

//save the latest tab; use cookies if you like 'em better:

localStorage.setItem('lastTab', $(e.target).attr('href'));

});

//go to the latest tab, if it exists:

var lastTab = localStorage.getItem('lastTab');

if (lastTab) {

$('a[href="' + lastTab + '"]').tab('show');

}

2 Scoops of Django

Posted on March 6, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

I got the book 2 Scoops of Django a few months ago and MAN has it come in handy!

The section about abstract model classes really helped me specifically, I can’t wait to read more of it and get into some better habits. Really is a fantastic book.

I recommend anyone interested in seriously developing Django apps reads this, yesterday

Best bootstrap button tool in da wurl

Posted on March 4, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

http://charliepark.org/bootstrap_buttons/

Interesting Gevent Tutorial

Posted on March 1, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

http://sdiehl.github.com/gevent-tutorial/

I will have to go over this thoroughly sometime!

jQuery newContent plugin

Posted on February 2, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

https://gist.github.com/1003630

// $.fn.newContent behaves kinda like .live(), it will act on elements that match the
// selector now, or in the future...  It automatically runs on any elements immediately
// matched, and also runs once on document ready.  You then call .newContent() on any
// freshly created content to trigger searching it

// $.fn.newContent behaves kinda like .live(), it will act on elements that match the

// selector now, or in the future... It automatically runs on any elements immediately

// matched, and also runs once on document ready. You then call .newContent() on any

// freshly created content to trigger searching it

Tracelytics vs New Relic (gevent)

Posted on January 9, 2013 by Eric Carmichael

I had been using New Relic for a little while to try and find out what the performance bottlenecks in my code were, that worked for quite some time!

However, as soon as I installed gevent and started playing with that, New Relic stopped working the way I expected. It returned much less interesting metrics, mostly not telling me anything that I could see.

In comes Tracelytics, with a custom gevent module! They even called me up and gave me a personal demo of all of the features they offer! I couldn’t ask for much more. Definitely appreciated it!

Django logging all sql queries

Posted on January 8, 2013 by Eric Carmichael



import logging
l = logging.getLogger('django.db.backends')
l.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)
l.addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

import logging

l = logging.getLogger('django.db.backends')

l.setLevel(logging.DEBUG)

l.addHandler(logging.StreamHandler())

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Documenting our experience learning development and design