Ubuntu:
Remember to replace link to selenium with version you need. Here we are using version 2.17.0 of Selenium.

wget http://selenium.googlecode.com/files/selenium-server-standalone-2.17.0.jar
sudo apt-get install xvfb
sudo apt-get install --no-install-recommends firefox
xvfb-run java -jar /root/selenium-server-standalone-2.17.0.jar

In your Jenkins/Hudson build step, you will want to:

• export DISPLAY=:99
• run your webserver (background)
• run your tests

Inside my __init__.py is the following code:

class BaseWebTestCase(TestCase):

    def setUp(self):
        self.base_url = 'http://localhost:8000'

        self.selenium = selenium(
            "localhost",
            4444,
            "*chrome",
            self.base_url
        )
        self.selenium.start()
        self.selenium.open('/')

    def tearDown(self):
        self.selenium.stop()

from webtests.account_tests import *

if __name__ == '__main__':
    import unittest, xmlrunner
    unittest.main(testRunner=xmlrunner.XMLTestRunner(
        output='xmlrunner',
        descriptions=True,
        verbose=True,
    ))

This is all that is needed to run Selenium tests in Jenkins/Hudson. With my settings above, the XML test results will be output into the folder “xmlrunner” which Jenkins/Hudson can read.

Tips and Tricks

You can autostart selenium when your machine boots by adding the following to /etc/rc.local:

xvfb-run java -jar /root/selenium-server-standalone-2.17.0.jar

Answer
Use Django’s builtin Form and JSON. It turns out that in Django, the data parameter can work nicely with JSON data. Here’s a simple example of what I mean:

def view(request):
    json_data = json.loads(request.POST.get('data', {})
    form = MyForm(data=json_data)

In knockout.js, your model should contain a subset (or all) your form fields. Then use ko.ToJSON(myModel) to create JSON data which can then be plugged directly into Django Forms.

Below is a somewhat more complete example of how Django, knockout.js and jQuery’s AJAX work together.

The Django Code

# urls.py
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^$', MyView.as_view(), name='my_view'),
)

# views.py
class MyView(TemplateResponseMixin, View):
    template_name = 'my_template.html'

    def post(self, request):
        data_json = json.loads(request.POST.get('data')
        form = MyForm(data=data_json)
        if form.is_valid():
            form.save()
            response = {'success': True}
        else:
            response = {'success': False}
        return HttpResponse(json.dumps(response), mimetype="application/json")

# forms.py
class MyForm(forms.ModelForm):
    field_one = forms.CharField(max_length=200)
    field_two = forms.IntegerField()

    # save() and class Meta-stuff goes here

The HTML

<input type="text" data-bind="value: form_data.field1">
<input type="text" data-bind="value: form_data.field2">

The javascript

// The javascript
$(function() {
    function MyModel(field1, field2) {
        var self = this;
        self.field1 = field1;
        self.field2 = field2;
    }

    function MyViewModel() {
        var self = this;

        // Data
        self.form_data = new MyModel('', 0);

        // Functions
        var handle_response = function(json_data) {
            var result = JSON.parse(json_data);
            if (result.success) {
                alert('success!');
            } else {
                alert('failed!');
            }
        }

        self.submit = function() {
            $.ajax('{% url my_view %}', {
                type: 'post',
                data: { data: ko.toJSON(self.form_data) },
                contentType: 'application/JSON',
                success: handle_response
            });
        }
    }

    ko.applyBindings(new MyViewModel());
});

LOGGING = {
    'version': 1,
    'disable_existing_loggers': True,
    'formatters': {
        'standard': {
            'format': '%(asctime)s [%(levelname)s] %(name)s: %(message)s'
        },
    },
    'handlers': {
        'file': {
            'level': 'INFO',
            'class': 'logging.handlers.RotatingFileHandler',
            'filename': '/path/to/logfile/requests.log,
            'maxBytes': 1024*1024*5, # 5MB
            'backupCount': 10,
            'formatter': 'standard'
        },
    },
    'loggers': {
        'django.request': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'INFO',
            'propagate': False,
        },
    }
}

Checking if pip is installed

Make sure you have pip installed. You can check if you have it installed by typing pip into your terminal:

checking if pip is installed

If you don’t have pip installed but you do have easy_install, you can install pip this way:

Via easy_install:

$ sudo easy_install pip

Other methods of installation for pip can be found at: http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/installing.html

Installing virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

On Ubuntu machines, you might need to run the following before you can install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper properly:

$ sudo apt-get install python-setuptools python-dev build-essential

I was able to install it on my Mac without any issues (although I already have XCode installed).

To install virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper:

$ pip install virtualenv
$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
...
$ export WORKON_HOME=~/Envs
$ mkdir -p $WORKON_HOME
$ source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
$ mkvirtualenv env1
Installing
distribute..........................................
....................................................
....................................................
...............................done.
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating /Users/derekkwok/Envs/env1/bin/predeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating /Users/derekkwok/Envs/env1/bin/postdeactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating /Users/derekkwok/Envs/env1/bin/preactivate
virtualenvwrapper.user_scripts Creating /Users/derekkwok/Envs/env1/bin/postactivate  New python executable in env1/bin/python
(env1)$ ls $WORKON_HOME

You may also want to add these 3 lines to your shell startup file (.bashrc, .bash_profile, .profile, etc…):

export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Devel
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh

You can find the full setup documentation of virtualenvwrapper at: http://www.doughellmann.com/docs/virtualenvwrapper/

Setting up your Virtual Environment for work with your Python Project

In the example below, we’re working on a Django project. You might consider creating a new virtualenv for your work:

$ mkvirtualenv myvirtualenv
(myvirtualenv) $ pip install Django==1.3.1
(myvirtualenv) $ pip install south
...
(myvirtualenv) $ python manage.py runserver

When you open up a new terminal window, your virtual environment is automatically activated. To re-activate your virtual environment, you can use the following commands:

$ workon myvirtualenv
(myvirtualenv) $ 

This command will automatically put you into “myvirtualenv” environment.

Leave any questions or comments below!

Setting up VirtualEnv in Jenkins

At the time of writing, I was using Jenkins 1.430.

The first thing you will need to do is to setup your PATH environment variable to “.env/bin:$PATH” as show below by navigating to “Manage Jenkins” > “Configure System”:

Configure PATH variable

Next, you will need to add a build step which will check to create/use the virtual environment. Here I also install unittest-xml-reporting and coverage tools.

if [ -d ".env" ]; then
    echo "**> virtualenv exists"
else
    echo "**> creating virtualenv"
    virtualenv .env
fi

source .env/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
pip install unittest-xml-reporting==1.2
pip install coverage==3.5.1b1

You ARE using a requirements.txt file to install dependencies for your project right? If not, see http://www.pip-installer.org/en/latest/requirement-format.html.

Adding virtualenv setup in build step

Then you can continue your build as normal. This concludes the tutorial to use virtualenv in Jenkins/Hudson.

Source: http://jenkins-ci.org/content/python-love-story-virtualenv-and-hudson

Leave your question/comment below!

September 9th, 2011: Today marks the start Project Win Network, a company for which I am the founder.

P-Win (Project Win Network) is a company that focuses on making web apps. We make any web app which we find interesting and where there is a chance for growth and profit (i.e. we can actually make money from it). Although at this point in time, you won’t find anything related to P-Win on the web, we will be making some announcements before the end of year for the web apps which we are working on. The other members of P-Win will be joining at a later date when the company achieves better stability and profitability.

Project Win Network got its name from when I was in university with James Ma. We had a lot of ideas, and each them would be called Project Win #1, Project Win #2, etc. All the way up to 52.  But we did not have the technical skills nor experience needed to complete these projects. This time around, we  have more experience/technical and managerial skills to do this properly. James is a project manager at Cast Software, and I spent another year freelancing and working at companies as a software developer.

That’s it folks! Starting tomorrow, I will be working full time at Project Win Network as Founder. Wish us luck.

You have a site (say http://www.example.com), with different subdomain or urls mapped for users from different countries. In this example, we’ll assume something along these lines:

• http://ca.example.com (for users from Canada)
• http://jp.example.com (for users from Japan)

If you are using Apache httpd to serve your website, you can use mod_geoip to make the redirect happen.

In this tutorial, you are assumed to be using Ubuntu with apache to serve your website.

Installing mod_geoip for Apache in Ubuntu

sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-geoip

This will automatically install Maxmind’s geoip module and enable it.

Using mod_geoip in httpd.conf or .htaccess

Below is a snippet of code showing an example configuration using geoip. In the example, the user will be redirect to http://ca.example.com if they are from Canada and http://jp.example.com if they are from Japan. The redirect syntax is regular apache mod_rewrite syntax (i.e. you can use regular expression and group matching to better redirect).

    GeoIPEnable On
    GeoIPDBFile /usr/share/GeoIP/GeoIP.dat

    RewriteEngine on
    RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^CA$
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://ca.example.com

    RewriteCond %{ENV:GEOIP_COUNTRY_CODE} ^JP$
    RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://jp.example.com

You can find the list of countries available at: http://www.maxmind.com/app/iso3166

Sources for this tutorial:

• Install mod_geoip for Apache2 on Ubuntu 9.10
• MaxMind – ISO 3166 Country Codes

An example of Gravatar's identicon

import urllib
from django.utils.hashcompat import md5_constructor

def get_gravatar_url(user, size=80, d='identicon'):
    gravatar_id = md5_constructor(user.email.lower()).hexdigest()
    gravatar_params = urllib.urlencode({'size': str(size), 'd': d})
    gravatar_url = \
        'http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/%(gravatar_id)s?%(gravatar_params)s' \
        % {'gravatar_id': gravatar_id, 'gravatar_params': gravatar_params}
    return gravatar_url

Quick explanation on the parameters:

• size – in pixels. The default is 80 pixels
• d – this stands for ‘default’. If a user doesn’t have a picture at gravatar, the image will be generated based on the default parameter. In this case, the default of ‘d’ is identicon.

If a user doesn’t have an account at gravatar (or that email doesn’t have a gravatar image associated with it), then an ‘identicon’ will be generated. Identicons are geometric representation of a hash value (you can read more about it here). Below are other options for ‘d’:

example gravatar with image

mystery-man

monsterid

wavatar

• Microsoft Windows Virtual PCs with Internet Explorer http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=11575
• Virtual Box: http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

Extracting the Microsoft VHDs

The easiest way to this is to extract the VHD file on a Windows Machine. However, if you do not have access to a Windows machine, you can use http://www.cabextract.org.uk/ to extract the images.

Setting up Virtual Machine

1. Create a new VirtualBox Machine by clicking on “New”. Select “Microsoft Windows” as the operating system and “Windows 7″ as the version.
   

   Creating a New VM in VirtualBox

2. Selecting 512MB to 1024MB of RAM should be enough for this virtual machine.
3. Important: Choose “Use existing hard disk” and select the .vhd downloaded as it’s hard disk.
   

   Selecting the .vhd file for VM

4. Click “Continue” to finish setting up the Virtual Machine.
5. Select the VM and click on “Settings”. Go the Storage Tab:
   

   Default Storage Configuration Provided by VirtualBox

6. Delete the Existing Win7_IE8.vhd, and under “IDE Controller” add the Win7_IE8.vhd. Your configuration should look like this:
   

   Configuring Storage for Windows VirtualPC hard disk

7. Start the Virtual Machine.
   

   Windows 7 Login Screen

8. The password for IEUser is: Password1

Happy testing previous versions of Internet Explorer! Leave any questions/comments in the comments section below.

Credits:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/55577/how-can-i-test-my-web-pages-in-microsoft-internet-explorer-on-a-mac

This post outlines getting cx_Oracle (for Python) to work in OS X.

Downloading Oracle Instant Client

You will first need to download the Oracle Instant Client from here: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/intel-macsoft-096467.html. The files you need are:

• instantclient-basic-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x86.zip
• instantclient-sdk-10.2.0.4.0-macosx-x86.zip

Extract both of these zip files into the same folder. Your folder contents should look something like this:

Installing cx_Oracle

Next, you will need to setup your environment variables. Edit your .bash_profile in your home directory and add the following:

export ORACLE_HOME=[your installation path]/instantclient_10_2
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME

Once this is done, quit and reopen your Terminal and type the following commands in:

cd $ORACLE_HOME
ln -s libclntsh.dylib.10.2 libclntsh.dylib

sudo -i
export ORACLE_HOME=[your installation path]/instantclient_10_2
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
export DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH=$ORACLE_HOME
pip install cx_Oracle

cx_Oracle will be installed if there were no errors during the pip installation. Leave a comment here if you encounter any problems!