Django projects
I’ve always thought that the sign of a healthy Open Source project is a vibrant ecosystem around that project. That’s why I’ve been thrilled to see that there are a bunch of cool third-party Django add-ons popping up. I thought I’d take a few minutes and give a shout out to some of my favorites.
django-openid
OpenID evangelist and Alpha Geek Extraordinare Simon Willison wrote this set of tools which lets your Django application become an OpenID consumer.
Once you’ve wired the app up in your settings file, you’ll have access to a user’s OpenID information from your views:
def example_view(request):
if request.openid:
return HttpResponse("OpenID is %s" % escape(str(request.openid)))
else:
return HttpResponse("No OpenID")
You can read more in the documentation, see in in action on Simon’s site, and provide feedback on the mailing list.
django-registration
Written my friend and co-worker James,
django-registration is a
simple generic user-registration app that compliments the built-in
Django auth system. It couldn’t be simpler; you just include the
registration URLs and point your users to /accounts/register/
. It Just
Works™.
For more information you can check out the ReadMe.
django-tagging
In just a few lines of code you can add tagging to any model you like and easily pull out objects by tag usage, tag clouds for particular objects, etc. A bit of a self-link – I contributed a smidge of code – but it’s really an awesome app.
You might start a del.icio.us clone with something like:
from django.db import models
from tagging.fields import TagField
class Bookmark(models.Model):
title = models.CharField(maxlength=200)
url = models.URLField()
tags = TagField()
… which would let you deal with tags in a very easy manner:
>>> b = Bookmark.objects.get(...)
>>> b.tags = "foo bar baz"
The main developer, Jonathan Buchanan, has written fantastic documentation, and the code is totally solid.
django-voting
Another app by Jonathan. He took the one-off voting code I wrote for CheeseRater as part of my PyCon tutorial and fleshed it out into a great tool. Here’s an example from the documentation:
>>> user = User.objects.get(pk=1)
>>> widget = Widget.objects.get(pk=1)
>>> Vote.objects.record_vote(user, widget, +1)
>>> Vote.objects.get_score(widget)
{'score': 1, 'num_votes': 1}
Jeff added it to Lost-Theories earlier this week (see it in action) and tells me it couldn’t be easier.
A good way to get started might be to read about how you’d go about implementing reddit style voting for any model.
Any more?
Are there cool third-party Django tools you’ve been using lately? Leave some links in the comments; I’d love to check ’em out!