2011
Serving static files for Django on Webfaction
In my last post I wrote about the setup of Django with virtualenv on the Webfaction hosts. The post did not cover the serving of static files and will be covered here. It's always better to serve static media through an extra HTTP server/container doing nothing but serving static media files for better scaling. Normally I use nginx for this as it is small and fast. For Webfaction hosting you have two possibilities:
You can add a "Static only" application that is an nginx, configure it for a separate (sub)domain and then configure your Django project to use this domain for serving the files. Wasn't that easy!
Or you can use the Apache for serving the files.
Create the "media" folder somewhere on your server (e.g. within the virtualenv folder: /home/<username>/webapps/<wsgi-app>/<virtualenv-dir>/media). Now adjust the apache.conf to load the modules required for serving the media and set some expiration time if you like (I used 12 hours as seen below). I'm only writing the updates to the apache.conf of the last post:
EDIT: had to temporarely disable the snippet, as the host does not answer. Please check for yourself: snipt.org/embed/wmkmm
2010
Django with virtualenv on Webfaction
I really like the Django web framework and I like virtualenv enabling me to use different python configs and packages for different projects. And I have to say I like Webfaction, so easy, so good! (No, I don't get paid by them) This is a quick guide on how to setup Django in virtualenv using mod_wsgi with a Webfaction account.
- Create an "mod_wsgi" application and create a website to use this application
- connect to your accounts shell using ssh
- enable Python 2.6.x as default python (as written in the Webfaction documentation)
- run "vi ~/.bash_profile"
- append the line "alias python=python2.6" (navigate to the last line, push "i" for insertion, write the line, push escape)
- save the file and exit (enter ":wq")
- reload the bash profile "source ~/.bash_profile"
- ensure it worked by checking the Python version "python -V"
- install "pip" and "virtualenv" (be sure to use easy_install-2.6 to use the setuptools of Python 2.6.x):
- enter "easy_install-2.6 -U pip"
- enter "easy_install-2.6 -U virtualenv"
- I like yolk, that enables you to list the installed Python packages, install it using pip if you like
- "pip install yolk"
- Note that these packages (pip, virtualenv, yolk) are installed in your global Python. I recommend to not install any more packages to the global installation as virtualenv enables use to install all packages we need into the virtualenv Python lib.
- navigate to your recently create mod_wsgi webapp, there should be 2 folders, "apache2" and "htdocs"
- create the virtualenv for your project in the wenapp folder, name it like you want, I'll use "ve" here
- "virtualenv --no-site-packages --distribute ve"
- a new folder "ve" with the virtualenv was created. Please refer to the virualenv documentation for more information and usage of virtualenv.
- Now let's install yolk into the virtualenv to see which packages are in there
- either activate the virtualenv and install:
- "source ve/bin/activate"
- "pip install yolk"
- or use pip magic to install into an virtualenv without activating it:
- "pip -E ve install yolk"
- either activate the virtualenv and install:
- now you activate the virtualenv and execute yolk:
- "source ve/bin/activate"
- "yolk -l"
- "deactivate"
- Install Django and any requirements the same way as demonstrated for yolk.
- Assuming you installed Django into the virtualenv and created a Django project, we now must adjust the Apache config
- backup the httpd.conf from /webapps/<yourdjangoapp>/apache2/conf
- create a django.wsgi file somewhere in your webapp dirdctory (I use the conf folder of apache)
- scan the httpd.conf for "Listen XXX", XXX ist the webapp port
- remove the <Directory>...</Directory> segment
- append the following telling the Apache to use the wsgi config we create in the next step:
NameVirtualHost *:<webapp-port>
<VirtualHost *:<webapp-port>>
ServerName <SomeServerName>
WSGIScriptAlias / /home/<your-username>/webapps/<your-webapp-name>/apache2/conf/django.wsgi
</VirtualHost>
- Edit the django.wsgi file:
#!/usr/bin/python
import os, sys, site
# add virtualenv python libs
site.addsitedir('/home/<your-username>/webapps/<your-webapp-name>/ve/lib/python2.6/site-packages')
# append the project path to system path
sys.path.append(/home/<your-username>/webapps/<your-webapp-name>/ve/')
sys.path.append('/home/<your-username>/webapps/<your-webapp-name>/ve/<your-django-project-name>')
# set the settings module
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = '<your-django-project-name>.settings'
# init the wsgi handler
from django.core.handlers.wsgi import WSGIHandler
application = WSGIHandler()
- Restart the Apache (/home/<your-username>/webappas/<your-webapp-name>/apache2/bin/restart) and everything should be fine!
2010
Simple MySQL Backup @ Github
A while ago I wrote about a little script I created, for simple backups of MySQL databases and emailing the backups.
I found some time to continue on the project and moved it to Github. You can find it as well as documentation there!
2010
Show Django AdminSite fields depending on the current user
Introduction
The auto-created AdminSite in Django is a nifty feature for creating an administrative view of your model classes. Somehow it is not perfect, even if you want to customized it. To guide you to my problem and solution you've to know, that I implemented the SoftDelete behaviour for model classes as described by Greg Allard. It simply adds a 'deleted' field to each model marking it as deleted if its deleted in the admin site (or in some application) but never really gets deleted from the database. So in the admin site there is this field 'deleted' displayed, if you have configured it.
The Problem
My project has 2 different 'usergroups', the editors and the superusers. Superusers should see the 'deleted' fields, the others not. Unfortunatly that is not possible out of the box with Django.
2009
Simple MySQL Backup at Google Code
A while ago I wrote an article about a script I created to backup databases. Since then I had to make little changes and decided to put it to Google code as Open-Source-Project and released the new version 0.1.1 with some minor changes.
If you're interested in the script, head over to its project page and check the appropriate pages like the Changelog and the Installation and Requirements page. Feel free to download and comment it.
2009
zoe.vc is back
Finally we made it to the new server. Unfortunatly all special characters are broken, but I'll fix that later. And hopefully I'll have same time to post new content 
2009
Probably Site Downtime
Howdy!
As I'm moving the domain to a new server these days it could be possible that zoe.vc isn't reachable for some hours or even days. So don't be confused - everything will be alright after the movement is finished. Comments are disabled meanwhile.
Thanks for your understanding!
2009
The Bug Genie 2 SVN Integration on Windows with VisualSVN Server
In my local development environment at home I use The Bug Genie 2 for bugtracking. The tool is quiet cool, although the german translation is totally broken (I fixed it and send it to them, let's see what happens). It comes with a module called "svn_integration" for integrating SVN into the tracker to automatically have updated issues when the SVN comments contain special keywords. That's quiet cool, too, but unfortunatly does not work for me.
I'm using Windows Vista Business x64 as os and for SVN the wonderful, free and easy VisualSVN Server. Next ugly thing on The Bug Genie is that there is no documentation for the modules. I found an entry in the forums how to use the integration in windows, but that did not work out of the box. But the code is already within the module, what is good.
So open modules/svn_integration/post_commit.php from your buggenie installation directory and adjust this line with your path to the bugtracker installation dir:
define('BUGS2_INCLUDE_PATH', 'D:\\xampp\\htdocs\\bugs\\');
Then create a batch file in the same directory called post-commit.bat. You can see the source below, copy it and adjust the following variables. I used the code from the forum post and adjusted it a little. Remember that urls with whitespaces do not work, create a symlink or rename your directories:
- Path to svnlook.exe (you see my VisualSVN Server resides in D:\VisualSVN_Server, the default location C:\Program Files (x86)\VisualSVN Server does not work because of the whitespaces) VisualSVN Server has all the svn tools in its bin directory.
SET SVNLOOK=D:\VisualSVN_Server\bin\svnlook.exe
- The path to your php executable. I used XAMPP, so it is in D:\xampp\php\php.exe if installed in root on drive D.
SET PHP=D:\xampp\php\php.exe
- The path to your SVN directory. This is where svn stores its data.
SET SVN_PATH=D:\svn\
- The post-commit hook we create later takes two arguments from VisualSVN Server, the path and the revision. Unfortunatly VisualSVN Server uses the url as path which collides with the svnlook command we use to determine if a bug was mentioned in a revision comment, as svnlook wants the real file path.
So we have to adjust the url to a path. As there is no real substring functionality for windows batch (or I did not search long enough) we simply count the length of our SVN url. In my case VisualSVN Server listens at https://amanda:8443/svn/, so a repository would be at https://amanda:8443/svn/my_repos. The server root (https://amanda:8443/svn/) has a length length of 24. Change the 24 to the length of your url. The batch then combines the SVN_PATH and your repository path to the local path, D:\svn\myrepos in my case here.
SET REPOS=%REPOS:~24%
- Once again, set the path to your installation directory of the bugtracker (replace D:\xampp\htdocs\bugs with your path):
%PHP% -f "D:\xampp\htdocs\bugs\modules\svn_integration\post-commit.php" "%AUTHOR%" "%REV%" "%COMMIT_MSG%" "%CHANGED%"
After your saved the file, open VisualSVN Server and the properties of your repository. Select the the Hooks tab and doubleclick the Post-commit hook. Enter the path to the batch file with the 2 arguments path and revision, in my case I entered "D:\xampp\htdocs\bugs\modules\svn_integration\post-commit.bat %1 %2", where %1 is the repository path and %2 the revision number.
Finally you have to install either WebSVN (which I prefer) or ViewVC and specify the path to your repository (in my case it is http://localhost/websvn/listing.php?repname=my_repos&) in The Bug Genie module settings for svn_integration.
One final and important hint: your user in the bugtracker has to have the same username as in SVN. By default, the first user in the tracker has the username "Administrator". My SVN user does not have the name "Administrator", so I logged out of the tracker, changed the property "uname" of the MySQL table "bugs2_users" for the admin to my SVN username, logged in and then everything worked fine.
As always, feel free to add comments and spread the word
And here the post-commit.bat code:
@echo off SET REV=%2 SET REPOS=%1 REM path to svnlook (remember that paths with whitespace do not work e.g. C:\Program Files --> use mklink to create a path without) SET SVNLOOK=D:\VisualSVN_Server\bin\svnlook.exe REM path to php executable SET PHP=D:\xampp\php\php.exe REM path to svn (not url!) SET SVN_PATH=D:\svn\ REM maps the svn url to the svn path - straightforward but the easiest way REM replace with the length of your svn url e.g. 24 for https://amanda:8443/svn/ SET REPOS=%REPOS:~24% SET REPOS=%SVN_PATH%%REPOS:/=\% %SVNLOOK% log -r %REV% "%REPOS%" > COMMIT_MSG REM SET THE COMMIT_MSG FROM THE FILE. The file is expected to contain only one line with this value FOR /F "delims=" %%A IN (COMMIT_MSG) DO SET COMMIT_MSG=%%A echo COMMIT_MSG=%COMMIT_MSG% %SVNLOOK% changed -r %REV% "%REPOS%" > CHANGED REM SET THE CHANGED FROM THE FILE. The file is expected to contain only one line with this value FOR /F %%A IN (CHANGED) DO SET CHANGED=%%A echo COMMIT_MSG=%CHANGED% %SVNLOOK% author -r %REV% "%REPOS%" > AUTHOR REM SET THE AUTHOR FROM THE FILE. The file is expected to contain only one line with this value FOR /F %%A IN (AUTHOR) DO SET AUTHOR=%%A echo COMMIT_MSG=%AUTHOR% %PHP% -r "echo urlencode($argv[1]);" "%COMMIT_MSG%" > URL_COMMIT_MSG REM SET THE URL_COMMIT_MSG FROM THE FILE. The file is expected to contain only one line with this value FOR /F %%A IN (URL_COMMIT_MSG) DO SET URL_COMMIT_MSG=%%A echo COMMIT_MSG=%URL_COMMIT_MSG% %PHP% -f "D:\xampp\htdocs\bugs\modules\svn_integration\post-commit.php" "%AUTHOR%" "%REV%" "%COMMIT_MSG%" "%CHANGED%"
2009
MySQL Backup Skript mit Emailversand.
A while ago I found a good script for backing up a MySQL database and sending it via email to a recipient here.
The script is cool, but I didn't like its structure and the fact, that you have to add the database values inline and that it can only backup a single database. For this reason I rewrote it a little and you can download it here.
Features:
- Backup of mutliple databases
- Sending of backups to multiple users
For every single database a mail is send and there is no file saved on the server. And wow: it's really easy to configure!
How do I use it?
- Download the current version (0.1)
- Adjust the backup.php (you're getting help by my wonderful comments)
- upload everything to a directory of your choice
- if applicable, create a cronjob to periodically execute the script
And here the backup.php that calls the appropriate classes and executes the backup (also included in the download):
ini_set('error_reporting', E_ALL); // include the files require_once 'MySQLConfig.php'; require_once 'MySQLBackup.php'; // add some databases to backup // the domain will be appended to the email subject and is also included within the sql file for identification. $cfgHost0 = new MySQLConfig('username0', 'password0', 'database_name0', 'domain0'); $cfgHost1 = new MySQLConfig('username1', 'password1', 'database_name1', 'domain1'); $backup = new MySQLBackup(); // the path to the directory where this script is resided $backup->setExecutionPath('/srv/domain/backup/'); // add the database configs to backup $backup->addDatabaseToBackup($cfgHost0); $backup->addDatabaseToBackup($cfgHost1); // the sender of the backup mail $backup->setSender('admin@yourdomain.com'); // add some people to receive the backup $backup->addRecipient('john@yourdomain.com'); $backup->addRecipient('frank@yourdomain.com'); // execute the whole thing $backup->backup();
If there are any problems or suggestions or feature wishes, please comment this post - thanks!
PS: to create a cronjob log into your server using SSH, then execute "crontab -e" to edit the crontab and insert for example "0 2 * * 0,3 wget http://yourdomain.com/backup/backup.php -nc -q -O /dev/null" for an execution on sunday and wednesday at 2 am. Save and close the whole thing with ":wq" and that's it
2009
Meine Top3-Entwicklungstools
Blog-Parade! Das Ziel, ausgerufen von MSDN Deutschland, ist dabei heute, seine Lieblings-Entwickler-Tools vorzustellen. Da will ich sogleich starten:
Platz 3 nimmt das XAMPP Projekt ein. Mit dieser tollen Sammlung bekommt man alles, was man braucht, um lokal mehr oder minder schöne Webseiten zu entwickeln: Webserver, Datenbank und Emailversendeding. Und man kann es überall mit hin nehmen, z.B. auf den USB Stick.
In der goldenen Mitte steht SVN, die Open-Source-Lösung zur Softwareversionierung. Da ich ja ein alter Windows-Hase bin, nutze ich VisualSVN, den meiner Meinung nach besten und schönsten SVN-Server für Windows, und TortoiseSVN als Client. SVN hat mir schon mehrfach den Arsch gerettet, zum Glück committe ich immer relativ häfig. Auch unverzichtbar beim Entwickeln von TYPO3-Extensions.
Platz Numero Uno nimmt eindeutig die Eclipse IDE bei mir ein. Ohne dieses wertvolle Tool entsteht eigentlich keine Zeile Code. Die Vorteile liegen auf der Hand: kostet nix, zuverlässig, schier unendlich erweiterbar. Ich nutze dabei das Bundle "Eclipse IDE für Java EE Developers", welches zusätzlich mit PDT, Subclipse und dem Google Appengine SDK gepimpt ist. Damit ist eigentlich alles, was ich so programmiere, abgedeckt.
Ich könnte noch ein wenig weiter auflisten, aber das ist jetzt nicht Sinn der Sache. Also nochmal kurz:
1. Eclipse
2. SVN
3. XAMPP
So, und nun her mit meiner X-BOX!
