Blog entries tagged with 'python'

  • New year, new job

    By Nuno Mariz, on 14 December 2012 @ 10:02

    Starting from January 2013, I'll be working at Oracle on the MySQL Utilities Team as a Software Developer.
    It's a new chapter on my professional career and a unique opportunity for doing what I like the most, which is Python programming on an open source project.

    I'm leaving InfoPortugal S.A., a special company that was my home for the last 6 years. It was a pleasure working with such a talented team. A special Thanks to Alexandre Gomes, a great professional with an incomparable commitment to the company.

  • Portuguese Python User Group

    By Nuno Mariz, on 18 May 2009 @ 08:45
    Python Portugal
    I've created a Python User Group in Portugal. The idea is to join people who enjoy programming in Python.
    No membership is required to participate, experienced programmers and absolute beginners are both welcome!
    You can visit the site or follow us on Twitter.
  • Internet lifestream with Django

    By Nuno Mariz, on 4 April 2008 @ 01:30
    My goal was to archive and display my internet lifestream. My first approach was writing a client for each API of the social networks that I'm in.
    This turned out to be a complete waste of time and effort. All that I needed after all was a FriendFeed account that would centralize all my feeds.

    Archiving and displaying your entries with Django is quite simple.
    First of all, you need to download the Python FriendFeed API client. Then start a new application in your project, lets call it lifestream:

    ./manage.py startapp lifestream

    On the settings.py add the lifestream project to the INSTALLED_APPS and a variable to store your FriendFeed username:

    FRIENDFEED_USERNAME = 'your_username'

    In the models.py add a model named Entry:

    from django.db import models
    class Entry(models.Model):
        id = models.CharField(max_length=255, primary_key=True)
        service_id = models.CharField(max_length=50, null=True, blank=True)
        service_name = models.CharField(max_length=50, null=True, blank=True)
        service_icon = models.URLField(max_length=255, verify_exists=False, null=True, blank=True)
        title = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
        updated = models.DateTimeField(null=True, blank=True)
        published = models.DateTimeField(null=True, blank=True)
        media_title = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
        created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
        def __unicode__(self):
            return self.title
        class Meta:
            ordering = ['-published']
            verbose_name = 'Entry'
            verbose_name_plural = 'Entries'
        class Admin:
            list_display = ['title', 'service_name', 'published']
            list_filter = ['service_name']
            date_hierarchy = 'published'

    Create an url.py on the lifestream folder:

    from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
    from lifestream.models import Entry
    entry_list_dict = {
        'queryset' : Entry.objects.all(),
        'paginate_by' : 30,
    urlpatterns = patterns('',   
        (r'^$', 'django.views.generic.list_detail.object_list', entry_list_dict),

    As you can see, I've used a generic view. You can also use the date based generic views and pagination to build an archive like mine.

    Add to your project root urls.py:

    (r'^lifestream/', include('lifestream.urls'))

    Create a template lifestream/entry_list.html:

    {% for entry in object_list %}
    <div class="source">
      <a href="{{ entry.service_profile }}" title="{{ entry.service_name }}"><img src="{{ entry.service_icon }}" alt="{{ entry.service_name }}" alt="{{ entry.service_name }}" /></a>
    <div class="details">
        <li><a href="{{ entry.link }}">{{ entry.title }}</a></li>
        <li>{{ entry.published|timesince }} ago</li>
        {% if entry.media_thumbnail %}<li><a href="{{ entry.media_link }}"><img src="{{ entry.media_thumbnail }}" alt="{{ entry.media_title }}" /></a></li>{% endif %}
    {% endfor %}

    Finally, create a script to synchronize your feeds:

    #!/usr/bin/env python
    # -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
    import sys
    import os
    ROOT_PATH = os.path.realpath(os.path.dirname(__file__))
    sys.path.insert(0, ROOT_PATH)
    sys.path.insert(1, PROJECT_PATH)
    os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = '%s.settings' % PROJECT_DIR
    from friendfeed import FriendFeed
    from django.conf import settings
    from lifestream.models import Entry
    ff = FriendFeed()
    feed = ff.fetch_user_feed(settings.FRIENDFEED_USERNAME)
    for e in feed.get('entries'):
        entry, created = Entry.objects.get_or_create(id=e.get('id'))
        if created:
            service = e.get('service')
            entry.service_id = service.get('id')
            entry.service_name = service.get('name')
            entry.service_icon = service.get('iconUrl')
            entry.service_profile = service.get('profileUrl')
            entry.title = e.get('title')
            entry.link = e.get('link')
            entry.updated = e.get('updated')
            entry.published = e.get('published')
            media = e.get('media')
            if media:
                entry.media_title = media[0].get('title')
                entry.media_link = media[0].get('player') or entry.link
                thumbnails = media[0].get('thumbnails')
                entry.media_thumbnail = thumbnails[0].get('url')

    If you want, you can add a job in your crontab:

    # synchronize every 15 mins
    */15 * * * *   root   /path/to/your/application/lifestream_cron.py

    See my lifestream as the working example.

    UPDATE: Friendfeed sends the time in UTC, if you want to use your timezone you have do some hacking:

    Install pytz:

    easy_install pytz

    Import and assign your timezone to a variable:

    import pytz
    tz = pytz.timezone(settings.TIME_ZONE)

    And replace entry.updated and entry.published with:

    updated = e.get('updated')
    updated = updated.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc).astimezone(tz)
    published = e.get('published')
    published = published.replace(tzinfo=pytz.utc).astimezone(tz)
    if settings.DATABASE_ENGINE == 'mysql': # http://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/5304
        updated = updated.replace(tzinfo=None)
        published = published.replace(tzinfo=None)
    entry.updated = updated
    entry.published = published

    Thanks to Chris Kelly that send me an email reporting this.

  • Django error notification with jabber

    By Nuno Mariz, on 7 March 2008 @ 13:26
    Django has a code error notifications mechanism when a view raises an exception. It will email the people in ADMIN tuple(settings documentation) in settings.py with the full exception information and displays the default 500.html template.
    This only happens when DEBUG=False in the settings.py.

    It's possible to set a handle that change this behavior with a handler500 variable in the root urls.py.
    So, we can easily write a simple view that sends an error notification to our jabber account.

    First of all, you need to install xmpppy and dnspython:

    $ easy_install xmpppy
    $ easy_install dnspython

    Add to settings.py the jabber parameters such as the jabber id, password, recipient, etc.:

    JABBER_ID = 'your_jabberid@jabberdomain.com'
    JABBER_PASSWORD = 'your_jabber_password'
    JABBER_RECIPIENT = 'recipient@jabberdomain.com'
    JABBER_ERROR_TEXT = 'An error occurred in "Project Name", please check your email.'

    Start a new app named errors or something else and add it to the INSTALLED_APPS tuple in the settings.py:

    python manage.py startapp errors

    Add a handler500 variable with the view in the root urls.py:

    handler500 = 'errors.views.server_error_jabber'

    Finally add the view in errors.views that sends a jabber notification and returns a 500 error page:

    from django.views.defaults import server_error
    from django.conf import settings
    import xmpp, time
    def server_error_jabber(request, template_name='500.html'):
           jid = xmpp.protocol.JID(settings.JABBER_ID)
           cl = xmpp.Client(jid.getDomain(), debug=[])
           conn = cl.connect()
           if conn:
               auth = cl.auth(jid.getNode(), settings.JABBER_PASSWORD, resource=jid.getResource())
               if auth:
                   id = cl.send(xmpp.protocol.Message(settings.JABBER_RECIPIENT, settings.JABBER_ERROR_TEXT))
                   # Some older servers will not send the message if you disconnect immediately after sending
       return server_error(request, template_name)

    NOTE: Don't forget to set DEBUG=False in the settings.py.
  • Twitter user timeline with a Django templatetag

    By Nuno Mariz, on 11 February 2008 @ 10:45
    A simple templatetag for adding to the template context a variable with the user timeline from Twitter.
    It uses the CachedContextUpdatingNode snippet for caching from Jacob Kaplan-Moss.
    The reason that is necessary to cache content is because Twitter limits the number of accesses to the API.
    This only works if the cache is enabled on your settings.py.
    class TwitterNode(CachedContextUpdatingNode):
        cache_timeout = 1800 # 30 Minutes, maybe you want to change this
        def __init__(self, username, varname):
            self.username = username
            self.varname = varname
        def make_datetime(self, created_at):
            return datetime.fromtimestamp(mktime(strptime(created_at, '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S +0000 %Y')))
        def get_cache_key(self, context):
            return 'twitter_user_timeline_cache'
        def get_content(self, context):
                response = urllib.urlopen('http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/%s.json' % self.username).read()
                json = simplejson.loads(response)
                return {self.varname : None}
            for i in range(len(json)):
                json[i]['created_at'] = self.make_datetime(json[i]['created_at'])
            return {self.varname : json}
    def twitter_user_timeline(parser, token):
        bits = token.contents.split()
        if len(bits) != 4:
            raise TemplateSyntaxError, "twitter_user_timeline tag takes exactly three arguments"
        if bits[2] != 'as':
            raise TemplateSyntaxError, "second argument to twitter_user_timeline tag must be 'as'"
        return TwitterNode(bits[1], bits[3])
    {% twitter_user_timeline username as twitter_entries %}
    {% if twitter_entries %}
      {% for entry in twitter_entries %}
      {{ entry.created_at|date:"d M Y H:i" }} - {{ entry.text }}
      {% endfor %}
    {% endif %}
    Use the source, Luke.
  • Fullread updates

    By Nuno Mariz, on 10 January 2008 @ 10:34
    New features on Fullread:
    • Feeds in the latest and user bookmarks.
      • http://fullread.com/feeds/latest/[rss/atom]/ (By latest - all users)
      • http://fullread.com/feeds/[username]/[rss/atom]/ (By user)
    • List of users that bookmarked the same URL.
    • Multiple bookmarking service support.

    NOTE: If you are using a bookmarking service that is not available, please let me know: http://fullread.com/contacts/?subject=Bookmarking%20service%20support.

  • Fullread

    By Nuno Mariz, on 3 January 2008 @ 19:53
    Fullread is online. It's just a simple tool that helps you organize your online readings.
    I use del.icio.us a lot, mainly for bookmarking, but right now my account is a complete mess because I’m constantly adding links that I want to read later and I don't delete them.
    Fullread uses a simple concept: I add an URL to my account to read later, then I decide to archive, delete or add it to my del.icio.us account.
    Feel free to send me any feature request or something else.
    I hope you enjoy it.
  • Smallr updates

    By Nuno Mariz, on 23 November 2007 @ 17:56
    After I've messed up about the domain issue(see this comments), I've just updated smallr with some features. Now provides an API to access the service by REST.
    Right now only supports JSON, XML will be is also available soon.
    A bookmarklet is also available.
  • Smallr

    By Nuno Mariz, on 22 November 2007 @ 19:51
    I've just released smallr. It lets you generate small web addresses with a keyword that make it easy to remember, will not break in emails and will never expire.
    Basically is a TinyURL clone, with a keyword addon.
    There will be an API for webservices with JSON and XML, eventually a Firefox extension.
    Test it and send me some feedback.
    I hope you enjoy it.
  • iPhone says Welcome to Django

    By Nuno Mariz, on 20 August 2007 @ 20:50
    Django on iPhone

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