Caktus Blog

When testing a Django application you often need to populate the test database with some sample data. The standard Django TestCase has support for fixture loading but there are a number of problems with using fixtures:

Do your mornings usually consist of reading design blogs and drinking coffee? Are you obsessive about fonts? Are you constantly seeking out new inspiration to make your designs better? As a Front-End Developer + Designer at Caktus, you’ll be able to put your passion for design and development to work by creating beautiful designs for complex websites. You will work closely with clients to bring their visions to life and help lead the branding and design process. Our designers take ownership of the user experience and design process from the beginning and collaborate with our development team to implement the vision. You should be passionate about the open source community and the philosophy behind it. If you’re interested in becoming part of and contributing to a creative, dynamic team, here’s an idea of what you’ll do:

[Caktus is proud to be a part of the launch of the]{style=“color:#000000; background-color:transparent; font-style:normal;”} PyCon 2014 in Montreal[ website. We were delighted to be selected as this year’s partner for software development and brand updates. In the past, we've enjoyed working with the ]{style=“color:#000000; background-color:transparent; font-style:normal;”}Python Software Foundation[ as a collaborator for the ]{style=“color:#000000; background-color:transparent; font-style:normal;”}Raspberry.io[ branding and development and are excited to help out with the PyCon website.]{style=“color:#000000; background-color:transparent; font-style:normal;”}

If you’ve ever written a test for a view or model with associated uploaded files you might have noticed a small problem with those files hanging around after the tests are complete. Since version 1.3, Django won’t delete the files associated with your model instances when they are deleted. Some work-arounds for this issue involve writing a custom delete for your model or using a post_delete signal handler. But even with those in place the files would not be deleted during tests because the model instances are not explicitly deleted at the end of the test case. Instead, Django simply rolls back the transaction and the delete method is never called nor are the signals fired. This can be quite an annoyance when running the tests repeatedly and watching your MEDIA_ROOT (or worse your S3 bucket) fill up with garbage data. More than annoyance, this introduces something you always want to avoid in unittests: global state.

This blog post is about ways of doing things in your Django app, and pitfalls to avoid, so your app is easier to plug in to other sites.

[As part of the Fulbright Enrichment [From Lab to Market]{style=“font-style: italic;”} seminar, Caktus hosted 16 Fulbright students from around the world on Wednesday, May 29th. The participants were engineering and science students with an interest in Public Health and Mobile Health innovation.]{#docs-internal-guid–15dfdd3-f622-293e-da9c-340d4c5b5818}

We had our 2nd ShipIt Day at Caktus last week. ShipIt (coined by Atlassian), in case you don’t know, is an exercise that allows your team to work on alternative projects in a 24-hour hackathon. We brainstorm ideas related to Caktus, break into small groups and try to build a project by the end of the day on Friday. It’s a lot of fun and provides an opportunity to work on internal tools, try something new and collaborate together. \

We manage a number of open source Django apps here at Caktus. While many of us here are proficient in a number of programming languages, the same can’t be said for our ability to read or write in languages other than English. The Django community is global and we want our apps to support other languages. For that we’ve turned to Transifex which it the same tool Django itself uses for translations.

UNICEF clients Erica Kochi and Christopher Fabian were listed among Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2013 for creating text-message based applications in the developing world. They spearheaded RapidSMS, the open source web framework used for applications like sending infant HIV results via text in Zambia. Caktus worked directly with Kochi and Fabian and were instrumental in the core development of RapidSMS, the creation of RapidSMS.org on behalf of UNICEF, and initial RapidSMS applications in Africa.

SwitchPoint is a one-of-a-kind conference and a unique opportunity to learn, share ideas, and hear about global and mobile health efforts around the world. We had a great time at SwitchPoint last year. I’m excited to announce that Caktus, for the second year in a row, is sponsoring [SwitchPoint 2013]{style=“color: rgb(17, 85, 204);”}.