[boston-pig] Fwd: Python Meetup Notes 6/8

Sat Jun 10 17:28:21 EDT 2006

Dan - thanks for typing up the notes from the meeting. I wanted to  
add a few links regarding 1) SQL 2) Ajax/JS 3) sIFR 4) PayPal.

1) Object-Relational mapping in Zope
compares ZSQL methods, SQLObject, SQLStorage, Ape and Hornet
http://blogs.nuxeo.com/sections/blogs/florent_guillaume/ 
2005_08_11_object_relational

2) The two tools I mentioned for generating client side JS from  
Python are:

Bling
blog post: http://bcsaller.blogspot.com/2005/12/bling.html
slides: http://plone.org/events/regional/nola06/collateral/ 
blingtalk_nola.pdf
video: http://media.plone.org/video/conference/2006/NOLASymposium/ 
BenSaller.wmv

Azax/kukit
description: http://bubblenet.be/home/community-work/kukit-azax-details/
architecture:
http://plone.org/products/azax-kukit.js/documentation/azax-kukit- 
architecture/azax-kukit-architecture/architectural-overview

other Ajax tools
http://plone.org/events/sprints/snow-sprint3/ajax
ZPDojo: http://plone.org/products/zpdojo

why are people afraid of Javascript?
Andy McKay's blog post: http://www.agmweb.ca/blog/index.php?p=6

3) sIFR - Rich Accessible Typography for the Masses
official site: http://www.mikeindustries.com/sifr/
implementing in Plone: http://plone.org/documentation/how-to/sifr
docs: http://wiki.novemberborn.net/sifr

4) PayPal IPN
here's a python script that will log an IPN request from PayPal
http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Cookbook/Python/Recipe/456361

Nate

p.s. I started playing around with Beautiful Soup to scrap the WGBG  
jazz events calendar (www.wgbg.org/jazz) and I'm liking what I see!

--
Nate Aune - natea at jazkarta.com
http://www.jazkarta.com

On Jun 9, 2006, at 7:16 AM, Chris Curvey wrote:

> Here's the notes from last night's meeting.  Thanks, Dan!  (And  
> thanks to all who attended.)
>
> -Chris
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> From: Dan Milstein <danmil at comcast.net>
> Date: Jun 8, 2006 10:16 PM
> Subject: Python Meetup Notes 6/8
> To: Chris Curvey <ccurvey at gmail.com>
>
> Chris,
>
> Here's what I've got -- feel free to email it around to all and  
> sundry:
>
> In attendance, clockwise from me:
>   - Me (Dan Milstein)
>   - Charlie - working with IVR
>   - Ned (who showed up a few minutes in)
>   - Gerard -- interested in learning
>   - Nate   -- the plone master
>   - Sally  -- from the Nature Conservancy?
>   - Jack   -- also interested in learning
>   - Chris  -- um, you
>
> We talked about libs / tools etc that we like:
>
>   - Charlie likes ElementTree for dealing with XML
>
>   - I talked about the beauty that is BeautifulSoup
>
> And, apparently, many folks have needs for screen-scraping python
> apps, since there was much nodding of heads.  I showed off my two-
> liner for finding all the important rows of the table that has the
> text "Regular Season" in it somewhere:
>
>      reg_season_tbl = soup.firstText('&nbsp;Regular
> Season').findParent('table')
>      trs = reg_season_tbl.fetch('tr', { 'class':['ysprow1',  
> 'ysprow2']})
>
>
>   - Sally talked about nose and its auto-running of tests tricks
>
> Jeff Winkler's blog has more.  She also mentioned AgileTesting.com .
>
> She also had great things to say about PyGoogle -- the Python
> interface to the Google API.
>
>
>   - Chris had great things to say about ZSI - the Zolera Soap  
> Interface
>
> It let him talk to PayPal's web servicey SOAP system.  And there was
> much rejoicing.
>
>
>   - There was some general talk about generating AJAX-y client-side
> JS from Python
>
> None of it seems far along, but we name-dropped
>     - PyJamas (pygwt)
>     - Bling
>     - Kukit
>
> Ned raised a concern (a question?) about the utility of using server-
> side Python to write your client-side scripting (which is sort of
> what those systems do), since the two tend to deal with different
> data universes.  Along those lines (at least in my mind), no one was
> clear on how you test the code for events like dragging and dropping
> and the like.
>
>
>   - Many people had good things to say about Selenium for web testing
>
> Ned raised that they have some issues with it because it can't
> generate all the events in JS that they need (e.g. double-clicking).
> I talked some about a different approach I've been using for my code,
> which is more focused on spec'ing pre- and post-conditions in the
> database, the session, etc, and less on driving a browser.  There is
> definitely some ways in which Selenium complements what I've got (and
> may do it better, in fact).  I made a personal note to check that
> Selenium out one more time.
>
>
>   - I raved about GraphViz
>
> And, again, there was much nodding -- it is a rock star tool for the
> graph visualization.  Go AT&T labs, go.
>
>
>   - Ned likes SmartyPants -- turns regular quotes into curly quotes
>
> He talked about his start-up company, Tabblo.  We should all go to
> their website:
>
> http://www.tabblo.com/
>
> It's a photo/story-sharing site, but it is not Flickr.
>
> They are using Django, but they can't keep up with the trunk.  He
> explained what is afoot with the big Django magic-removal branch, but
> they haven't gotten sync'd up with it.  On a personal note, for me,
> this cleared up the question of whether the "magic-removal branch"
> I'd been hearing about meant removing the magic, *or* some deeply
> magic way of doing removals.  I am somewhat relieved to learn that it
> is the former.  Onward.
>
> Tabblo is going to try to move to the new, non-magic stuff, but it's
> lacking some features they want/need.  For example, you can't do
> model inheritance.
>
> They use python imaging library (PIL) to generate thumbnails and what
> not.
>
> Ned has been using pdflib, which costs money, but generates pdf with
> precise control over formatting (from all sorts of languages). The
> python wrapper has the C nature.  But it works.  reportlab is maybe
> worth looking at.
>
> tabblo uses memcached -- we discussed memcached vs. squid and some
> questions about caching part of a page and caching db results and the
> like.
>
>
>   - Nate talked about sIFR as an interesting way to get rich
> multimedia that gracefully degrades
>
> People use it for, e.g. headlines
>
>
>   - Sally talked about S5 (?), which lets you nicely autogenerate
> slideshow/presentation type stuff
>
> Maybe via ReST ->  S5 -> latex -> pdf.
>
>
>   - Charlie talked about AwareTek -- Ron Stevens -- lots of
> tutorial / evangelist stuff
>
> Dive into Python is maybe a good book to learn from.
>
>   - Nate talked about BarCamp
>     - Weekend event, no planned agenda
>     - An unconference conference
>     - Nate org'd one about building online communities for musicians
>     - How to solve a rubik's cube using grid computing
>
>
> That's what I've got. Hope it's helpful...
> -Dan
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> The short answer is "Yes."  The long answer is "No."
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