Learning Ember.js

Ember.js is like Angular on steroids.  Strangely enough, some of the code reminds me of Python microframeworks like Bottle.

Understanding Python Decorators

As I learn more about web frameworks in Python, I am getting more exposure to Python decorators.  Decorators seem easy to use, but I have a hard time understanding them.  Hoping this article will clear them up:

http://simeonfranklin.com/blog/2012/jul/1/python-decorators-in-12-steps/

Question About Rails Asset Pipeline

From staring at my old code and poking around the web, I figured out that the Rails Asset Pipeline loads up all of your assets (Javascript, CSS, etc.) and smashes them together into a manifest file for fast and easy digestion.  When does this happen?  When your app starts up?

Scraping Success!

Managed to send out a Spider using Scrapy to scrape a website and save the results in a JSON file!  Now I just need to work on some formatting for the JSON file.

Writing A Spider In Python

Even though I successfully scraped a website with Ruby and Nokogiri, I decided to continue explore scraping websites with Python and Scrapy.  Today I wrote my first spider in Python.  You can watch my progress in my github repository:

https://github.com/cspears2002/scrapestat

I need to look up deploying Python to Heroku:

https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/getting-started-with-python

Actually, deploying to Heroku might not make any sense.  This is not a web app.

Running A Quick Webserver With Python

Python never ceases to amaze me.  Here is how to run a quick web server using Python from the command line:

unknownc8e0eb148153:D3 christopherspears$ python -m SimpleHTTPServer
Serving HTTP on 0.0.0.0 port 8000 ...
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jan/2014 10:53:35] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jan/2014 10:53:36] "GET /data.tsv HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jan/2014 10:53:47] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -
127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jan/2014 10:53:47] "GET /data.tsv HTTP/1.1" 200 -

127.0.0.1 - - [10/Jan/2014 10:54:13] "GET / HTTP/1.1" 200 -

As you can see, the server is serving up the data.tsv file in the directory.  Here are some helpful links:

http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/tech-tip-really-simple-http-server-python

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12647196/how-do-i-shut-down-a-python-simplehttpserver

Scrapy is a framework

Weird.  Scrapy is actually a framework.  I feel like I am working in Django or Ruby on Rails again.

Scraping A Website With Python

Going to explore scraping a website with Python and Scrapy (http://scrapy.org/).

Python Installation Odds And Ends

Forgot to add this to the bottom of my .bash_profile file:

#Python

export PATH=/usr/local/share/python:$PATH

My site-packages folder is installed here:
/usr/local/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/site-packages

Which virtual environment am I working on?

Here is how to find out (as well as set and exit the virtual environment):

Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:scrapestat christopherspears$ workon

scrapestat
Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:scrapestat christopherspears$ workon scrapestat
(scrapestat)Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:scrapestat christopherspears$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV
/Users/christopherspears/.virtualenvs/scrapestat
(scrapestat)Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:scrapestat christopherspears$ deactivate
Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:scrapestat christopherspears$ echo $VIRTUAL_ENV

Setting Up virtualenvwrapper on Mac OS X

The software virtualenvwrapper is a wrapper around virtualenv that has a lot of neat functions that allows the user to manage multiple virtual environments.  I decided to install the wrapper today.

First I ran the following:

$ pip install virtualenvwrapper

Then inside of the .bash_profile file inside of my home directory I added the following lines.

# virtualenvwrapper stuff
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/PyDevel

source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

Finally I sourced .bash_profile:

$ source ~/.bash_profile

Now I have a directory called .virtualenvs/ inside of my home directory.  Inside of my home directory, I create the 'PyDevel' directory.

Then I created my project's directory:

Christophers-MacBook-Pro-2:~ christopherspears$ mkproject scrapestat
New python executable in scrapestat/bin/python2.7
Also creating executable in scrapestat/bin/python
Installing Setuptools..............................................................................................................................................................................................................................done.
Installing Pip.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................done.
Creating /Users/christopherspears/PyDevel/scrapestat

Setting project for scrapestat to /Users/christopherspears/PyDevel/scrapestat