The right man in the right place

If mod rewrite is not working in your apache server under Ubuntu:

Invalid command 'RewriteEngine', perhaps mis-spelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

You have to run the following command in a terminal:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Python has jumped from 6th to 5th place in TIOBE Programming Community Index (May 2009). Congratulations!

Little experiment:

python -m timeit -r 100 -s "d={'a':'1', 'b':'2', 'c':'3'}" "d.has_key('a')"
1000000 loops, best of 100: 0.361 usec per loop

python -m timeit -r 100 -s "d={'a':'1', 'b':'2', 'c':'3'}" "'a' in d"
10000000 loops, best of 100: 0.159 usec per loop

Checking if dictionary has key using “in” is faster than using has_key() method.

Tested in Python 2.6

How to write and read array from cookies ?

The easiest way to write an array in cookie is serialize it using pickle module and quote returned string with urllib module. For example:

import pickle, urllib
cookie = []
response.set_cookie('some_cookie', urllib.quote(pickle.dumps(cookie)))

And getting an array from cookie:

cookie = pickle.loads(str(urllib.unquote(request.cookies['some_cookie'])))

Remember the trick!

The easiest way to modify response headers in Pylons is add:

response.headerlist = [('Content-type', 'image/png')]

just before render() function.

This is a simple solution to create own decorator function for any action in Pylons.

First, you have to import some functions:

from decorator import decorator
from pylons.decorator.util import get_pylons // to get request environment

Now create decorator function, for example myowndecorator:

def myowndecorator():
    def wrapper(func, *args, **kwargs):
        request = get_pylons(args).request # use it for any operation with request
        # do something
        return func(*args, **kwargs)
    return decorator(wrapper)

Save it in your project lib directory as mylib.py.

In last step you have to import function from you library, and use decorator in your controller:

from myproject.lib.mylib import myowndecorator

class PanelController(BaseController):
    @myowndecorator()
    def index(self):
        return render('/panel/index.mako')

I had to create basic authentication in my project(based on Pylons), and this is simple solution to do it.

First, you have to open your config/middleware.py. It’s necessary to import AuthBasicHandler: from paste.auth.basic import AuthBasicHandler.

Next step is find ‘app = PylonsApp()‘. Change this line to: ap = PylonsApp() and add after: app = AuthBasicHandler(ap, “My realm”, authfunc). Of course you need to create auth function, for example:

def authfunc(environ, username, password):
    if username == 'myusername' and password == 'mypassword':
        return True
    else:
        return False

Restart your application environment.

That’s it

New version(0.9.7) of Pylons framework has been released. It’s a big step to standardize code and documentation

Major changes:

• Switched to using WebOb for the request/response object
• Various performance improvements to object initialization
• Beaker and Routes updates
• Middleware improvements, and optimizations

On the 19 of February this year my University is going to organise conference about SQL Server 2008.
The topics:

- T-SQL Tips&Tricks
- SQL Server 2008 - what will give to developers and administrators
- Integration Services - something else aside than sending data

Conference’s place:

Wy ższa Szkoła Bankowa w Poznaniu Wydział Zamiejscowy w Chorzowie
Street: Sportowa 29
City: Chorzów
Start: 8:00

More information on the conference website: http://ms-groups.pl/plssug/Strony/SeminariumSQLServer2008.aspx

I have noticed today pylonshq.com has new website It’s prettier than last one. and I hope it’s announce, that new stable version(0.9.7) of Pylons is comming soon