Back in August 2011, I started ZenIRCBot both as a learning experience in Node.js and to fill a need which was a IRC bot for personal use as well as for use at Aquameta. Since then a few of my friends have picked up using it to have their own IRC bots that they can easily write services for.
In other people using it, I got some valuable feedback like using executable config files while sometimes really handy, makes it harder to write services that build on each other in different languages. To this end I plan on changing out the executable config files with pure JSON ones. JSON is already required to communicate via the protocol so this makes sense to me.
Another thing that is spawning from others using the IRC bot is I need to start being strict about my versioning. I'll likely go with Semantic Versioning as it is basically what I'd already do but has more formal specification. The config files will be treated as part of the public API, as well as the protocol. This means when I change the configs to be JSON I'll also be bumping the version number to 2.0.0.
Other things that will be coming out in the near future are docs for every service, another pass over existing documentation, additional services, a way for services to register themselves, and a new mechanism for running the bot. These things and more are all in the issues on GitHub. If you have any input for additional services that would be useful please feel free to open a ticket, or if you feel so inclined, write it and send a pull request.
This project has been the most interesting IRC bot I've ever written. All in all I think this project is going well and I am looking forward to it evolving over the coming months as it get more adoption, better docs, and cleaner code and APIs.
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
Read the Docs
Over the last few months I've really started to love Read the Docs. Several of my favorite projects are hosted on there. Projects such as Fabric, Requests, and Celery are all hosted on there. The list keeps growing, which is great. Read the Docs is a fantastic project that is promoting and unifying documentation even across language boundaries, both human and programming.
I got involved with Read the Docs during the sprints of DjangoCon 2011 as I have mentioned before on my blog. So my opinion isn't entirely unbiased, but I wouldn't have gotten involved if I didn't believe in it and what goals it is pressing towards. I strongly urge others to also contribute, which can come in many forms, such as spreading the word on using Read the Docs, writing docs and posting them on there, filing bug reports on things you find wrong or feature requests for things you think could be done better, or finally by contributing your coding or design skills.
Something that is pretty interesting is there have been a number of projects that aren't software libraries that have found their way on to Read the Docs. There have been a few books written using Sphinx and then posted on Read the Docs. Notes from various talks and conferences. And recently I stumbled upon a resume that is hosted on there and it got me thinking that I should do the same.
My resume is now hosted on there, though a warning, it is a work in progress. It looks really nice though, and I have access to multiple file types of it that sphinx and Read the Docs have generated, including a PDF. I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to write their resume, have it stand out a bit, but still look really nice.
Basically, this post is just to talk about how much I have come to depend on Read the Docs and to also to encourage people to use and help out in various ways. I love this project and if have ever come across horrible documentation, so should you.
I got involved with Read the Docs during the sprints of DjangoCon 2011 as I have mentioned before on my blog. So my opinion isn't entirely unbiased, but I wouldn't have gotten involved if I didn't believe in it and what goals it is pressing towards. I strongly urge others to also contribute, which can come in many forms, such as spreading the word on using Read the Docs, writing docs and posting them on there, filing bug reports on things you find wrong or feature requests for things you think could be done better, or finally by contributing your coding or design skills.
Something that is pretty interesting is there have been a number of projects that aren't software libraries that have found their way on to Read the Docs. There have been a few books written using Sphinx and then posted on Read the Docs. Notes from various talks and conferences. And recently I stumbled upon a resume that is hosted on there and it got me thinking that I should do the same.
My resume is now hosted on there, though a warning, it is a work in progress. It looks really nice though, and I have access to multiple file types of it that sphinx and Read the Docs have generated, including a PDF. I highly recommend it to anyone that wants to write their resume, have it stand out a bit, but still look really nice.
Basically, this post is just to talk about how much I have come to depend on Read the Docs and to also to encourage people to use and help out in various ways. I love this project and if have ever come across horrible documentation, so should you.
Sunday, January 22, 2012
Django Generic Class Based View Tip
Those reading this via a feed reader will have to view the page on my blog as I am using embedded gists. I'll find a solution for that in the future.
So say you have a base template that looks something like:
And a template that looks like either of these:
It used to be that you could write something like this:
But generic function based views are deprecated and the world is being strongly urged to move to generic class based views. If you would like to get extra_content working with the direct_to_template replacement TemplateView, you can use a view like the following:
And a urls.py like the following using it:
The code used in this blog post can be found in this gist.
So say you have a base template that looks something like:
And a template that looks like either of these:
It used to be that you could write something like this:
But generic function based views are deprecated and the world is being strongly urged to move to generic class based views. If you would like to get extra_content working with the direct_to_template replacement TemplateView, you can use a view like the following:
And a urls.py like the following using it:
The code used in this blog post can be found in this gist.
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