This document provides an overview and introduction to Pinax, an open source framework built on Django that aims to provide common functionality needed for web applications out of the box. It discusses what Pinax is, when it should be used, its key features like reusable apps and starter projects, alternatives to Pinax, and tips for development using Pinax like testing, deployment and source control best practices.

1. Intro to Pinax
Kickstarting Your Django Apps
SyPy - November 2011
Roger Barnes @mindsocket
roger@mindsocket.com.au http://gplus.to/mindsocket

2. Who am I
 Roger Barnes BTech ICS
 By day: Tech Lead/Applications Developer Java :(
 By night: Up and coming Python ninja

3. Topics
 Intro to Django
 Intro to Pinax
 Alternatives
 Development Tips
 Q&A

4. What is Django
”The web framework for perfectionists with
deadlines”
Initially developed in an online news environment
Designed for rapid development

5. Django Framework
 Object-relational mapper
 Automatic admin interface
 Elegant URL design
 Template system
 Caching
 More...
 i18n, syndication, generic views, schema
generation, development server, user model,
scheduled jobs, test harness, ...

6. Django is...
… really well documented
https://docs.djangoproject.com

7. Example: More Betterer
 My first Django app
 Goal 1: Learn some Python and Django
 Goal 2: Find out what photos people liked

8. Example: More Betterer
 Very simple models
 Item (an image)
 Challenge (a showdown between 2 items)
 Item manager
 counts challenge votes
 provides ordered list

9. st
Lessons from 1 Django app
 Django alone isn't a quickstart/shortcut for
 common web 2.0 functionality
 OAuth, social, tagging, voting
 front-end
 HTML, CSS, JS
 This is true of many web frameworks
 Either front- or back-end focussed
 Some best practices aren't obvious
 or are evolving (eg class-based views in 1.3)

10. What is Pinax
System for kickstarting Django projects
”Pinax takes care of the things that many sites
have in common so you can focus on what makes
your site different”
Quickly go from idea to launch (and beyond)

11. What is Pinax
 Social friendly
 Comments
 Voting
 Notifications
 Profiles/Accounts/OAuth
 ...
 Startup friendly
 Private beta
 Invite codes
 Starter projects

12. When to use Pinax
Great for building and maintaining multiple sites
… quickly
Not as much benefit for a big enterprise app

13. Pinax - Pros and cons
 Pros
 Has a lot to offer
 Easier to start with a pinax starter and adapt
 Cons
 Misunderstood
 No recent releases (but active branches on github)
 Django compatibility (Pinax 0.9a1 needed tweaks to
work with Django 1.3)
 Overall: worth it

14. Example: Now and Then
An application for aligning and overlaying
historical images with modern equivalents

15. Example: Now and Then

My 2nd Django app
 Goal 1: Libraryhack entry - http://libraryhack.org/
 Goal 2: Learn more Django & Python!
 Approx. 1 month development
 Started without Pinax
 got stuck on ”common functionality”
 Pinax helped get past theme and account
management issues

16. Example: Now and Then

17. Pinax – Primary Features
 Project conventions
 Layout
 Deployment
 Requirements - pip dependencies
 Templates - quick prototyping
 Core and reusable apps
 Back- and front-end functionality
 Starter projects
 Basis for a Django site, several options

18. Pinax - Layout
|-- apps |-- fixtures
| |-- about | `-- initial_data.json
| | |-- models.py |-- locale
| | |-- urls.py | |-- ...
| | |-- views.py |-- manage.py
| |-- my_foo_app |-- media
| | |-- ... | |-- css
| |-- ... | | `-- site_tabs.css
| | |-- ... | |-- ...
|-- deploy |-- requirements
| |-- pinax.fcgi | |-- base.txt
| `-- pinax.wsgi | `-- project.txt
|-- dev.db |-- settings.py
|-- templates
| |-- about
| |-- account
| |-- ...
|-- tests
| |-- ...
|-- urls.py

19. Pinax
For Now and Then:
 Requirements (pip)
PIL
 Base aino-convert
what pinax needs django-extensions
django-memcache-status
 Project django-jenkins
selenium
what you want to add pyvirtualdisplay
MySQL-python
python-memcached
flickrapi
south
django-tagging
django-voting
PyYAML
nltk
minidetector
geopy

20. Pinax
 Apps
 account and profile management
 openid, e-mail verification, password management
 notifications and activity streams
 private betas and waiting lists
 badges
 tagging
 wikis, forums and blogs
 task tracking
 friend and follower relations

21. Pinax
 Starter projects
 zero
 basic
 account
 static
 private_beta
 cms_company
 intranet
 social
 cms_holidayhouse
 company
 sample_group
 code

22. Pinax
Fairly well documented
http://pinaxproject.com/docs/
Code on github

23. Pinax project status
 Still in active development (see github)
 A new release pending
 Better ecosystem management
 Trying to solve the ”misunderstood” problem
 http://pinaxproject.com/ecosystem/

24. Pinax isn't
 A silver bullet for front-end
 BYO UX, design, HTML, CSS, JS skills
 Some solutions
 Twitter bootstrap – Pinax has a new theme
 Growing collection of other themes on offer
 HTML5 boilerplate
 Other template + less/CSS + Javascript library

25. Pinax – Idea to Launch
The next big social network
mytweetbooktubelyplus.com
Domain name is not currently registered.
Available for you now!

26. Pinax – Idea to Launch
 Steps
 mkvirtualenv --no-site-packages
mytweetbooktubelyplus
 pip install Pinax
 pinax-admin setup_project -b social
mytweetbooktubelyplus
 cd mytweetbooktubelyplus/
 git init
 git commit -am ”Initial commit”

27. Pinax – Idea to Launch
 Steps (continued)
 edit settings.py
 pip install PIL
 Better: add to requirements or remove dependent app
 python manage.py syncdb
 python manage.py runserver


 Profit!

28. Alternatives to Pinax
 Hand-pick your own bundled apps
 PyPI
 Djangopackages.com
 Other starter projects on github
 Eg: django-party-pack

29. Development tips
 South
 Schema management extension for Django
 Handles updates to existing/populated DB
 eg: Add/change a column in dev
 Generate/deploy code to do same in test/prod
 Integrates with django's management tools

30. Development tips
 Environment/package management
 virtualenv + pip (+ virtualenvwrapper)
 For more complex deploys, look at buildout
 local_settings.py (dev/test/prod)
 Contains environment specific config
 And passwords, add to .gitignore
In settings.py
try:
from local_settings import *
except ImportError:
pass

31. Development tips - Testing
 Django + unittest2
 Fixtures for testing models (tests.json)
 Django Client to test views (request/response)
def test_point_list(self):
"""Tests that point_list returns a valid list of lists"""
fusion = Fusion()
fusion.points = "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8"
self.failUnlessEqual(fusion.point_list(), [[1,2,3,4],[5,6,7,8]])
def test_fusion_edit_update(self):
self._login()
response = self.client.post('/fusion/edit/1/', {'points': '', 'cropthen': ''})
self.assertRedirects(response, '/fusion/view/1/')

32. Development tips – Testing
 TODO UI tests
 Selenium or similar to test UI, esp. javascript
def test_via_selenium(self):
from pyvirtualdisplay import Display
from selenium import webdriver
display = Display(visible=0, size=(800, 600))
display.start()
browser = webdriver.Firefox()
browser.get('http://myurl...')
# TODO …

33. Dev tips - Continuous Integration
 Jenkins  Build triggered by commit (or polled)
 unittest2
 django-jenkins
 coverage

34. Development tips - Deployment
 Fast all the way to production
 git pull - ok for simple application
 TODO: Build pipeline
 TODO: Continuous Deployment
 Production performance
 Apache + mod-wsgi – ok
 Use pinax.wsgi
 May need a little hacking to get paths right
 TODO: try nginx + uWSGI or similar
 TODO: High availability + reverse proxy

35. Development tips – Source Control
 DVCS good - Git(Hub), several alternatives
 Avoid old tech (svn, cvs, vss)
 Embrace branching, merging, regular commits
 Fork other people's repos
 Pull new changes
 Pull-request – send your improvements upstream
 Works with pip
pip install -e git+https://github.com/pinax/pinax-theme-bootstrap#egg=pinax-theme-bootstrap

36. Development tips

37. References
 Django
 https://www.djangoproject.com/
 http://djangopackages.com/
 Pinax
 http://pinaxproject.com/ & http://pinaxproject.com/ecosystem/
 https://github.com/pinax/pinax
 http://pinaxproject.com/blog/2011/10/10/djangocon-talk-pinax-after-three-years
 My apps/code
 http://bit.ly/morebetterer
 http://nowandthen.mindsocket.com.au/
 https://github.com/mindsocket/
 Twitter Bootstrap
 http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

38. Q&A