May 2010

archive

create/export and load/import csv files with mysqldump in mysql May
27 1
0

I'm often asked to create csv files to import into other applications. If you're using MySQL it's handy to be able to create a CSV on the fly with mysqldump. This is easily achieved with the following command:

mysqldump -u <user> -p --tab=<directory> --fields-enclosed-by='"' --fields-terminated-by=',' <database> <table>

This creates a .sql dump file and a .txt csv in the directory that you specified with [--tab]. The second part of this operation (the .txt csv creation) will be performed by the MySQL user, so it'll need to have write permissions in the [--tab] directory. Also, the mysql user needs to have the appropriate permissions (I believe it's the FILE privileges).

Alternatively you can import a csv into the database with the following command while logged into the mysql shell using the appropriate database:

LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/path/to/my.csv' INTO TABLE <table>
FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','
ENCLOSED BY '"'
LINES TERMINATED BY '\n'
(<field1>, <field2>, <field3>);

0 Comments

auto-populate subject and body line in mailto link May
21 1
0

Sometimes I need to auto-populate the subject and body lines inside a mailto link. All you need to do is attach the <subject> and <body> as GET variables.

<a href="mailto:test@example.com?subject=Your subject goes here.&body=Place the body text here.">Send me an email</a>

You can omit the email address if you want the user to be able to choose who she wants to send this to.

<a href="mailto:?subject=Your subject goes here.&body=Place the body text here.">Send me an email</a>

0 Comments

testing 404 500 error pages in django development envirnoment with django-cms May
18 1
0

It's nice to be able to test your 404.html and 500.html templates in your development environment before you push to production.

You could use direct_to_template, but it would be better to use the default Django views that the errors actually use. These are "django.views.defaults.server_error" and "django.views.defaults.page_not_found". All you need to do is to add these to your urlpatterns in a conditonal statement for local development. *** note the += ***

# urls.py

urlpatterns = patterns('',
    ...
)

if settings.LOCAL_DEV:
    urlpatterns += patterns('',
        (r'^404/$', 'django.views.defaults.page_not_found'),
        (r'^500/$', 'django.views.defaults.server_error'),
        (r'^media/(?P.*)$', 'django.views.static.serve', {'document_root': settings.MEDIA_ROOT} ),
    )

If you're using Django-CMS this is not going to work because the cms page middleware will call the 404 error before it gets to the LOCAL_DEV urls. This is easily fixed by moving the cms url include to after the LOCAL_DEV urls.

urlpatterns += patterns('',
    url(r'^', include('cms.urls')), # put this near the end
)

1 Comment

css3 border radius May
18 1
0

I keep having to look up the definitions for CSS border radius when it comes to supporting the Mozilla and Webkit specific styles. I'm pasting this here for easy reference.

-webkit-border-radius: 6px;
-moz-border-radius: 6px;
border-radius: 6px;

-webkit-border-top-left-radius: 6px;
-webkit-border-top-right-radius: 6px;
-webkit-border-bottom-right-radius: 6px;
-webkit-border-bottom-left-radius: 6px;

-moz-border-radius-topleft: 6px;
-moz-border-radius-topright: 6px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomright: 6px;
-moz-border-radius-bottomleft: 6px;

border-top-left-radius: 6px;
border-top-right-radius: 6px;
border-bottom-right-radius: 6px;
border-bottom-left-radius: 4px;

0 Comments

limit character entry with jquery May
18 1
0

It's common to need to limit character count on user input fields. There's a lot of plugins that you can get this to do it for you. However, when possible I like to reduce the amount of third party scripts. The basic concept is pretty simple to follow in JQuery.

Lets say you have HTML like the following:

<div id="limit"></div>

...
<textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" id="comment"></textarea>
...

You can then bind a keypress event that checks the lengh of the value on the input or textarea.

$('#comment').keypress(function() {
    var MAX_CHAR = 140 - 1;

    $('#limit').text('Characters remaining: ' + ((MAX_CHAR + 1) - $(this).attr('value').length));

    // limit entry
    if($(this).attr('value').length > MAX_CHAR) {
        this.value = this.value.substring(0, MAX_CHAR);
    }
});

This script prints out how many characters are left in the <div id="limit"> and limits the user to inputing 140 characters. No plugins necessary.

Limiting input on the front end is only a convenience for the user. If this functionality is important for your application make sure to make the proper checks and sensitization on the backend when processing the form.

1 Comment

call slugify template tag in django model or view May
17 1
0

Edited: 6.1.2011 - fixed typo

Sometimes I need to slugify something within a django model or view file. Django already has this functionality written as a template filter, and you can reuse this outside of the templates. You can import slugify into your python code like so:

from django.template.defaultfilters import slugify

slugify(<value>)

Which then allows you to write something like:

class Custom(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    slug = models.SlugField(blank=True)

    def save(self):
        self.slug = slugify(self.name)
        super(Custom, self).save()

However, if you need this type of functionality depending on your situation it might be easier to set this up using the django admin prepopulated_fields option.

# models.py
class Custom(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    slug = models.SlugField()


# admin.py
class CustomAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin):
    prepopulated_fields = {'slug': ('name',)}

admin.site.register(Custom, CustomAdmin)

This will auto-populate the slug field while you type the name within the django admin.

4 Comments

social network share link cheatsheet May
11 1
0

Here's some of the common social networks and their associated share link formats. They are all similar, but of course there's no standard . . . that would be too easy.

These are subject to change at any time. Please let me know if I've missed something.

<!-- twitter -->
<a href="http://twitter.com/home?status={{ title }}
{{ request.build_absolute_uri }}" title="Click to share this post on Twitter">twitter</a>
<!-- twitter -->

<!-- facebook -->
<a href="http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&t=<title of content>">facebook</a>
<!-- facebook -->

<!-- reddit -->
<a href="http://www.reddit.com/submit?url={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&title={{ title }}">reddit</a>
<!-- reddit -->

<!-- digg -->
<a href="http://digg.com/submit?url={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&title={{ title }}&bodytext={{ description }}">digg</a>
<!-- digg -->

<!-- delicious -->
<a href="http://delicious.com/save?url={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&title={{ title }}">delicious</a>
<!-- delicious -->

<!-- myspace -->
<a href="http://www.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=postto&u={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&t={{ title }}
&c={{ contetent }}">myspace</a>
<!-- myspace -->

<!-- stumbleupon -->
<a href="http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}">stumbleupon</a>
<!-- stumbleupon -->

<!-- linkedin -->
<a href="http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&title={{ title }}
&summary={{ description }}&source={{ source }}">linkedin</a>
<!-- linkedin -->

<!-- google bookmarks -->
<a href="http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=add&bkmk={{ request.build_absolute_uri }}&title={{ title }}">google bookmarks</a>
<!-- google bookmarks -->

0 Comments

smtp django settings May
11 1
0

I have to go trolling the internet every time I need to locate the default email variables that I need to set up the SMTP connection the settings file for Django, so I'm throwing them here for reference. Perhaps someone else might also find this useful.

EMAIL_HOST = 'mail.digitaldreamer.net'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = '*****'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = '******'
EMAIL_PORT = '25'
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = "test@example.com"
SERVER_EMAIL = "test@example.com"

1 Comment

get all users in a group in django May
10 1
0

There's a couple of ways to get the list of all users in a group in Django.

First, you should include the User and Groups class from django.contrib.auth (I'm going to assume you have this included in INSTALLED_APPS or else you wouldn't be here).

from django.contrib.auth.models import User, Group

Then you can do:

group = Group.objects.get(name='blogger')
users = group.user_set.all()

or

User.objects.filter(groups__name='blogger')

or if you want to get fancy

perm = Permission.objects.get(codename='blogger')
users = User.objects.filter(Q(groups__permissions=perm) | Q(user_permissions=perm) ).distinct()

8 Comments

getting the browser's scroll position with javascript May
09 1
0

Sometimes you need to dynamically detect the browser's scroll position. Dealing with browser inconsistencies is a PITA, but here is a javascript function that I use that gets the job done.

function getScrollXY() {
    var x = 0, y = 0;
    if( typeof( window.pageYOffset ) == 'number' ) {
        // Netscape
        x = window.pageXOffset;
        y = window.pageYOffset;
    } else if( document.body && ( document.body.scrollLeft || document.body.scrollTop ) ) {
        // DOM
        x = document.body.scrollLeft;
        y = document.body.scrollTop;
    } else if( document.documentElement && ( document.documentElement.scrollLeft || document.documentElement.scrollTop ) ) {
        // IE6 standards compliant mode
        x = document.documentElement.scrollLeft;
        y = document.documentElement.scrollTop;
    }
    return [x, y];
}

You can then call it like so:

var xy = getScrollXY();
var x = xy[0];
var y = xy[1];

4 Comments