will

It's All Geek to Me

Posts about technology, with a focus on web development with Python.

I am the author of Beginning Games Development with Python and PyGame.

Nov 20, 2015
in Tech

Deploy Encrypted Notes 1.0.0 to Heroku

A few weeks ago I built a little web application to store notes, which encrypts your notes in the browser and stores them in the cloud (yeah, I hate that term). The idea was that even if the server was compromised, nobody could read the notes without a password.

From the server logs it looks like a few people at least are actively using it, even though there is a big warning saying it is for testing only. No idea for what of course, because even in the admin all I can see is a string of random characters.

This is how notes are stored in the database.

I've jumped straight to version 1.0.0 with the latest release, since it has been running quite happily for quite some time with no issues. It's still 'use at your own risk', but it is such a simple application that there is so little to go wrong. continue reading…

Nov 20, 2015
in Tech

Deploy Moya Techblog with Heroku

A quick way to get Moya Techblog up and running (or just to test it) is to deploy it with Heroku.

If you click the following button, it will deploy Techblog on a public server:

When that's done you should have a working version of this site (sans my content obviously). It's remarkably easy to customize if you aren't happy with my coder design skills.

There is one caveat you should be aware of; Heroku has an ephemeral filesystem, which basically means that your uploaded files will disappear after a while. That is bit of a deal-breaker for a site designed for photography, but there is a solution. You can host your uploads with Amazon S3.

To use Amazon S3 with Techblog, set the following environment variables (you will have a chance to edit these when you deploy): continue reading…

Nov 19, 2015
in Tech

Introducing Moya Techblog, a Blogging Engine for Coders and Photographers

I've had a blog on my vanity domain for nearly a decade now. For the last 6 years, it has been powered by Django Techblog, which I wrote out of my frustration with syntax highlighting plugins in Wordpress. Techblog has happily served my blog those 6 years, with only minor hiccups when I half-heartedly ported the code to the latest Django.

There was nothing terribly wrong with Django Techblog; it had multiple blogs, tags, search etc., but there were some annoyances that I didn't have the motivation to do much about. The custom markup system I used was clever, but I would often forget the syntax! The support for images was rudimentary and the single-threaded comment system wouldn't notify me of replies. continue reading…

Nov 16, 2015
in Tech

Looking for an experienced Python Developer

My client, WildFoundry, is looking for an experienced Python developer to join us. We work in the field of IoT, and you will get to work with a variety of really cool technologies. Here's the job description:

WildFoundry is seeking a senior Python web application developer on a 8 month contract to help us in the development of the dataplicity Internet-of-Things platform (dataplicity.com). You would be expected to work from your home or own office most of the time and very high quality candidates based in Slovakia, Poland and the United Kingdom will be considered.

This is an unbeatable opportunity to work from home, earn excellent rates and join in with fast growing projects. continue reading…

Jun 28, 2015
in Tech

Build a database driven Markdown Wiki in 25 lines of code

This screencast demonstrates how to build a database driven, Markdown powered wiki from scratch in around 25 lines of code. Lines of code is of course a poor metric, but I think the end result of part 1 (more planned) packs quite a lot of functionality for what is very simple and readable code. I'll be building on this code in future screencasts, to create something which is more feature complete.

I found creating this to be a challenge; thinking, typing and talking is about 50% more things than I can do at once! Hopefully I'll master it as I go.

For more information on Moya, please see www.moyaproject.com.

Jun 14, 2015
in Tech

Moya 0.5.14 released

Today I released v0.5.14 of Moya, my no-Python Python web framework.

The no-Python probably needs some explaining… Moya is written in Python, and can be extended in Python, but runs web applications written in an interpreted language called Moya code (name is uninspired, I know).

This release was primarily driven by development of Bean Counter, a web app that manages virtual currency. Essentially it's online banking for internet based ‘money’, intended for use as a community currency.

In tandem with this release I've also added a couple of re-usable libraries which, I think, add a significant amount of value to Moya. The first is Moya Logins which creates OAuth Sign In buttons, i.e. Sign In with Google etc. The second is Moya Auto, which adds AJAX powered auto-completion to form inputs. continue reading…

Apr 12, 2015
in Tech

Fuzzy Matching video on Webucator

Nat Dunn of Webucator has created the following video based on my post about Sublime Text Fuzzy Matching with Javascript:

There's a lot more interesting content on his Webucator channel. I recommend checking it out!

Mar 14, 2015
in Tech

Saving processes and threads in a WSGI server with Moya

I have a webserver with 3 WSGI applications running on different domains (1, 2, 3). All deployed with a combination of Gunicorn and NGINX. A combination that works really well, but there are two annoyances that are only going to get worse the more sites I deploy:

A) The configuration for each server resides in a different location on the filesystem, so I have to recall & type a long path to edit settings. continue reading…

Mar 7, 2015
in Tech

Logging Incoming Links with Moya

Google Analytics and kin are great for getting stats on your visitors, but often I simply want to know: who is linking to my site? You can deduce this from web server logs, but server logs tend to be too noisy and a make it hard to pick out the referer URLs.

Moya doesn't have a stats library yet, but it's not hard to MacGuyver up a solution to log incoming links. We need to run some code on every request so that we can detect the referer and write a log message. The simplest way to do that is to create a <url> tag with a wildcard route of “/*”. We can add this <url> to the mountpoint of the site library (the site library is where we customize various aspects of the site). Here's the code:

Yes, referer is a misspelling, but it has been codified in to the http spec! continue reading…

Mar 5, 2015
in Tech

Sublime Text like fuzzy matching in Javascript

I recently implemented a Sublime Text like fuzzy matching for my encrypted notes app. Fuzzy matching is a really nice feature that I haven't seen used outside of code editors.

If you haven't used Sublime Text, the fuzzy matching is used to quickly open files. Rather than navigate directories in the UI – which can laborious – the open file dialogue uses the characters you type to filter a list of paths. Each character you type must match a character in the file path exactly once and and in the same order as they appear in the path. For instance the search “abgvi” would match “/application/blog/views”, as would “blgview”. The basic idea should work with any text, not just paths. continue reading…