A very long time ago (read: ten years ago), we were in-between the so-called First and Second Browser Wars. Internet Explorer had killed Netscape Navigator by taking advantage of their desktop monopoly and Scrooge McDuck-like financial reserves to install a free copy of Internet Explorer on every single computer in the world (basically). Internet Explorer […]
Author: Cory Benfield
Requests’ Two APIs
Kenneth Reitz’s excellent Requests library has been praised, rightfully, for its excellent API. In fact, its API is so good that it’s been praised in a literary context, as well as by almost every programmer who has come across it. There is no question that this API is one of the best you can find […]
collectr: Static File Management for All Of Us
A little while ago I wrote a blog post talking about Git hooks. As an example in that post I wrote a post-commit hook that would minify and upload my static files to S3. This has spiralled a little bit out of control since then, and I finally drew the line at maintaining that script. […]
Requests and the HTTP 302 Status Code
I wanted briefly to touch on the behaviour of the Python Requests library when it receives an HTTP 302 message. This has come up a couple of times on GitHub, and has usually been considered a bug, so it’s worth briefly stepping in and explaining what Requests does and why it does it. First, HTTP […]
Choosing The SSL Version In Python Requests
Over the last few months (and probably for quite a while before then too), a few issues have been raised on the Requests GitHub page asking how to select the version of SSL used by Requests. This is actually simple once you know how, so I thought I’d write a short post to show you […]
Writing A Transport Adapter
Last post I briefly mentioned that Python Requests went v1.0. This involved a huge code refactor and a few changes in the API. One of these changes was the inclusion of something Kenneth (and others) have been thinking about for a while as part of the future of Python HTTP ‘project’. This something is the […]
Not All Opinions Are Equal
This blog post is a reaction to this blog post by David Hansson. If you have the time, I highly recommend reading it. If you don’t, I’ll summarise the most relevant bits as I go. Having Things Your Way David Hansson has recently written a blog post about Rails, and in particular about how Rails […]
Not Everyone Needs To Be A Rockstar
Getting started in open-source software is intimidating. I know, I’ve been there: it’s always a little scary to have someone you’ve never met before critique your code, particularly if it’s someone whose work you respect and admire. More than that, though, I suspect that at least part of the fear most people (myself included) feel […]
OAuth Needs To Die In A Fire
As a personal project I’ve recently been looking into creating a small Twitter client in Objective-C/Cocoa. This is largely because I quite like Objective-C as a language and haven’t had the chance to write anything significant in it, but also partly because Twitter have made the news recently with their API nuttiness and I wanted […]
Git Yer Hooks In
Git, like all good source control systems, allows you to customise the behaviour of the SCM when certain actions occur. For lots of people in lots of projects it’s not vital to use these hooks, but from time-to-time you find yourself repeating the same commands time-and-again. In these scenarios, it is worth looking into setting […]
A Whistlestop Tour of Python Requests
Return to our regularly scheduled technical blogging, I’m going to give a quick overview of one of the software libraries I know best: Kenneth Reitz’s Requests library for the Python programming language. Since I started making minor (and I mean really minor) contributions to the library, I’ve become increasingly familiar with its use and utility, […]
Opalescent Olympics
Author’s Note: I’m taking a break from writing about tech to write about sports. Any readers who aren’t interested should wait until next week, when I sort-of-promise to write about the Python Requests library. Australian Opals enjoying their Bronze Medal victory. Image courtesy of London2012.com. The 2012 Summer Olympics are coming to a close. As […]
Let’s Build A Fileserver!
Those of you who know me will be familiar with the fact that I am what could be called a ‘digital packrat’. After a few years of university my DVD/Blu-Ray collection has expanded to the point that it fills multiple shelves, and I have digitised the whole thing. This has turned into a more than […]
The Importance of API-Oriented Design
Many programmers (or coders, or software engineers, or computer wizards, or whatever term you would like to use; the arguments had over this could and probably will fill a whole blog post on their own) find themselves involved to a greater or lesser extent in the development of libraries and programming utilities for the use […]
Things That Are Way Too Hard
When I went to university, I found myself studying Physics at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. This worked out very well for me: I can wholeheartedly and unreservedly recommend St Andrews as a place to study. The School of Physics is chock-full of great teachers and researchers, and my understanding is that the […]