Feeds

If you have some data in a Drupal site, say a list of contact form submissions, or a list of content, you might want to provide a way for visitors to download that list as a CSV or Excel file: there's a module for that.

Views Data Export - The story

This module has its roots firmly in the Drupal 6 glory days where basically every list in Drupal was a view. Had some blog posts: view; list of comments: view; images needing copyright review: view.

That made a simple extension module that could export that content to CSV or Excel really appealing, and the Views Bonus Pack module provided this functionality however, there were a number of issues. Top of our list of problems with it was that it tried to do the entire export in one big go, if you had a lot of data, then you were out of luck, you simply couldn't export it all. You'd have to do it page by page or something like that.

In our old office, we dreamed up a way to have Drupal's batch API iterate over the result pages and collect them all up into a single file for download.

Additionally, at the time we had a client who wanted to export data that was coming in pretty rapidly: they were getting submissions at the rate of several a second and needed to be able to accurately export all the submissions in one go, not getting any duplicates, etc.

We really wanted to be able to get this working nicely with the SQL backend for Views and found a way in MySQL to query and populate a table with the resultset in a single transaction. In this way, we would make an initial point-in-time copy of the data required to render the view, and then we could take our time to process through that data. As long as MySQL could query and write the data fast enough we could then use Drupal's Batch API to loop through the data at our leisure.

This approach worked nicely but needed to fork the Views Bonus module and so the Views Data Export module was born. In the years that followed: the module gained popularity, a Drupal 7 port, and something like 75,000 active sites using it.

Decline and Drupal 8

ComputerMinds had never put in place any sort of proper amount of time to do maintenance for Views Data Export and so after many years and unattended bug reports, Drupal 8 rolled around and we didn't invest time in doing a Drupal 8 port either.

However, Drupal has a great community and someone else stepped up and offered to port and maintain Views Data Export.

However, the bugs and feature requests continued to pile up, and the port was more of a re-imagining than a direct port of the code. This was completely understandable since the underlying systems of Drupal and Views had massively changed in those years. And basically, we weren't involved in explaining what the Drupal 7 version was doing and why.

The module entered a period of very minimal maintenance and essentially only got further updates for critical bug fixes and new Drupal core versions.

Let me be clear that this is no slight against anyone who has done brilliant work on the Drupal 8, 9 or 10 versions of Views Data Export, but proper amounts of time and resources were never put into the module...until now.

Re-maintainership

Recently we've changed some internal priorities around so that we can spend more time giving back to the Drupal community, and this coincided with someone asking me to be a co-maintainer for Views Data Export so that they could add Drupal 11 support.

I thought about it a lot and waited for the other maintainers to weigh in, but ultimately decided that I wanted to get back involved in the maintainership of Views Data Export and thus declined the generous offer of help. I did then work to get a Drupal 11 version out.

Going forward

I aim to maintain Views Data Export.

I'm working on exactly how this works, but it starts by regularly spending time working on the project.

Now...the project pages and issue tracker on Drupal.org are in a bit of a dire state:

• The project page documentation is almost entirely the original text I wrote for Views Data Export for Drupal 6, so some of the information there is completely out of data.
• The issue queues have been left relatively unattended for a decent while, so we have (at the time of writing):
  • 204 open bugs
  • 276 other open issues.
  • Several issues that are marked as RTBC that haven't been given any attention by the maintainers.
  • Plenty of duplicate issues.
  • Drupal.org issue queues are hard to read and work with, and slow :(
• The documentation is for Drupal 6/7 and is pretty bare-bones.

The code...well I've not read every line of code in the latest version of Views Data Export, I'm going to be doing that today to break up some of the issue queue management I'm going to be doing.

Drupal 7 version

According to the stats on Drupal.org there are still around 41,000 active Drupal 7 installs, and while those will be community EOLd in a month, I don't want to prematurely cut them off, so while I plan to close almost all of the Drupal 7 issues that I find, I won't mark the module unsupported as such. But that will happen in January 2025 anyway, when Drupal.org does that automatically.

Progress check

I intend to write an article like this one every 2 weeks detailing what has been done and what the plans for the future are. Mostly to keep me honest and focused! It's easy when starting on a bit of a big project like this to get lost and despondent about the size of the problem, so by trying to write about it, I'm hoping that I'll be able to look back and see progress even if won't always feel like any progress has been made!

Hey nonprofit Drupal users, do you want a free ticket to DrupalCon Atlanta? Submit to be a breakout discussion leader at the Nonprofit Summit!

What are you talking about?

The DA is interested in supporting community-driven content that is specifically relevant to nonprofit organization staff and related agencies at DrupalCon North America in Atlanta, Georgia, at the Nonprofit Summit on March 24, 2025.

We are looking for volunteers who would be interested in giving back to the community by contributing some subject matter expertise via a day of informal breakout sessions or other group activities. We are open to ideas!

Who are we looking for?

Do you have some Drupal expertise or a recent experience with a Drupal project that you would like to share with others? Is there something about Drupal that you think is really cool that you would love to share with the nonprofit Drupal community?

What’s required?

You will not be required to make slides! You don’t need to have lots of (or any) speaking experience! All you need is a willingness to facilitate a discussion group or engaging activity around a particular topic, and some expertise or enthusiasm for that topic that you wish to share.

How to Submit an Idea or Topic

Please fill out this form by January 31st. https://forms.gle/HBv1Za55MXr2sriPA

Discussion leaders will be selected by the Nonprofit Summit Planning Committee and will be notified by the middle of February.

Questions?

Email nonprofitsummit@association.drupal.org.

Automatically track documentation requirements Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 12/06/2024 - 07:00 Tags Nonprofits ECA Drupal Planet Automation

• Read more about Automatically track documentation requirements
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One of our clients is a yacht club that has their own moorage, which they lease out to members. With several hundred slips, their insurance requires them to maintain proof of insurance, up-to-date vessel registrations, and regular electrical inspections for all boats moored at their facility.

In Washington all vessel registrations renew in June, but insurance and inspections can expire any time of year. The office needs to keep copies of these documents on file.

Get ready to meet the inspiring minds shaping DrupalCon Singapore 2024! In the second part of our "Meet the Speakers" series, we spotlight the visionaries behind sessions that promise to redefine your understanding of Drupal. From Thijs Feryn revealing cutting-edge Varnish caching techniques to Abhisek Mazumdar demystifying Drupal distributions and recipes under the Starshot initiative, and Takahiro Komatsu sharing the art of creating Drupal books with local communities, this installment offers a glimpse into the sessions that will spark innovation and collaboration. Dive in to discover what these speakers have in store and why their sessions are not to be missed!

Let’s go for my web review for the week 2024-49.

Pourquoi les médias devraient créer des serveurs Mastodon maintenant

Tags: tech, social-media, fediverse, bluesky, politics, business

Article in French

Very good piece explaining why the Ferdiverse is currently our only option for a decentralized social media platform. Maybe Bluesky will become another option… maybe… but so far it’s only empty promises with a real risk of capture.

https://blogs.mediapart.fr/gaetan-le-feuvre/blog/291124/pourquoi-les-medias-devraient-creer-des-serveurs-mastodon-maintenant

Core copyright violation claim moves ahead in The Intercept’s lawsuit against OpenAI

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, gpt, copyright, law

Another lawsuit making progress against OpenAI and their shady practice.

https://www.niemanlab.org/2024/11/copyright-claim-moves-ahead-in-the-intercepts-lawsuit-against-openai/

New era of slop security reports for open source

Tags: tech, security, ai, machine-learning, gpt

Let’s hope security teams don’t get saturated with low quality security reports like this…

https://sethmlarson.dev/slop-security-reports

SmolVLM - small yet mighty Vision Language Model

Tags: tech, ai, machine-learning, vision

Nice vision model. Looks like it strikes and interesting balance between performance and memory consumption. Looks doable to run cheaply and on premise.

https://huggingface.co/blog/smolvlm

First Router Designed Specifically For OpenWrt Released - Software Freedom Conservancy

Tags: tech, foss, hardware, networking

This is an excellent milestone reached for the OpenWrt project. Easily available hardware is a must. It’s rather cheap too.

https://sfconservancy.org/news/2024/nov/29/openwrt-one-wireless-router-now-ships-black-friday/

Why pipes sometimes get “stuck”: buffering

Tags: tech, unix, system

Good post about the very much overlooked fact that lots of command buffer internally when their output is not a TTY.

https://jvns.ca/blog/2024/11/29/why-pipes-get-stuck-buffering/

Compilation on the GPU?

Tags: tech, compiler, gpu, research

Interesting research about feasibility of making compilers parallelized on the GPU. I wonder how far this will go.

https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145⁄3528416.3530249

Legacy Safety: The Wrocław C++ Meeting

Tags: tech, c++, safety

Interesting piece, it highlights well the struggle for the C++ community to come up with a cohesive approach to improve safety. It doesn’t look like the solution is going to come from the standardization committee (unfortunately).

https://cor3ntin.github.io/posts/profiles/

Structured Binding Upgrades in C++26

Tags: tech, c++

Very nice improvements finally coming to structured bindings indeed. Should make them even more useful.

https://biowpn.github.io/bioweapon/2024/12/03/structured-bindings-cpp26.html

Why I Hate Language Benchmarks - gingerBill

Tags: tech, language, benchmarking

Comparing languages based on some benchmark is probably a fool’s errand indeed. To many factors can change between language and benchmark implementations.

https://www.gingerbill.org/article/2024/01/22/comparing-language-benchmarks/

If Not React, Then What?

Tags: tech, web, frontend, react, criticism, product-management, performance

Excellent piece which shows why React (or Angular) is almost always a bad choice and that you’d be better off banking on the underlying web platform. It leads to better user experience full stop. The article also goes in great length debunking the claims which keep React dominant.

https://infrequently.org/2024/11/if-not-react-then-what/

Building A Strong Ownership Culture in A Team

Tags: tech, engineering, management

Nice example of organization to foster more autonomy and ownership in engineering teams. Clearly needs to be adapted to the project context but gives quite a few ideas. It strikes a nice balance at keeping both an individual and a team view of the responsibilities.

https://candost.blog/strong-ownership-culture-in-a-team/

An introduction to thinking about risk - Jacob Kaplan-Moss

Tags: tech, project-management, risk

Excellent article introducing how to analyse risks.

https://jacobian.org/2024/dec/4/risk-introduction/

Tying Engineering Metrics to Business Metrics

Tags: tech, engineering, business, metrics

Good mulling for thought. It’s always a bit challenging to nicely explain the tie between engineering metrics and how they impact the business. This is a nice starting point.

https://icchasethi.medium.com/tying-engineering-metrics-to-business-metrics-f4df7651e026

Bye for now!

In Episode 4 of The DropTimes "Splash Awards Finalists" series, we explore how Red Airship’s partnership with Aqua Expeditions transformed their digital presence. Discover how a Drupal-powered redesign elevated the luxury travel brand’s website, aligning it with their world-class onboard experiences and driving significant business growth.

The news you’ve been waiting for is finally here - registration for PyCon US 2025 is officially open!

PyCon US will take place May 14 - May 22, 2025, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania at the David L. Lawrence Convention Center. The core of the conference, May 16 - May 18, 2025, packs in three days worth of our community’s best talks, amazing keynote speakers, and our famed lightning talks to close out each day— but it is much more than that!

It’s gathering together with the members of our community, to learn from, share with, and connect. It’s joining a conversation in the hallway with the creators of open source projects. It’s taking yourself from beginner to intermediate; intermediate to advanced; or advanced to cutting edge. For some, it’s getting started with Python for the first time. We have loads of exciting plans in the works for this year, and we can’t wait to spend this special time with you!

How to Register

Once you have created an account on the PyCon US 2025 conference website, you can register via the registration button on your dashboard. Head over to our Registration Information page to get all the details on how to register.

Early Bird Registration RatesPyCon US is providing discounted rates for Corporate, Student, and Individual tickets for the first 500 tickets sold during the first 30 days that registration is open. Don’t wait, register now to receive your discount!

• Early Bird Corporate - $750
• Early Bird Individual - $400
• Early Bird Student - $100

Regular rates will go into effect once early bird tickets sell out or after January 6, 2025.

Regular Registration Rates

• Corporate - $800 USD
• Individual - $450 USD
• Student - $125 USD

Health & Safety Guidelines and Code of Conduct

PyCon US is committed to protecting the health and safety of our community. To ensure that we are gathering safely, we have implemented updated guidelines and protocols to be followed by all attendees during the event. We ask that you please review these guidelines prior to registration.

To support a safe environment and enjoyable experience for all, PyCon US attendees are also required as always to comply with our Code of Conduct, which you can review here.

T-shirts & PyLadies Auction

Conference T-shirts and tickets to the PyLades Auction are not yet available but will be released in the coming weeks. Keep an eye out on the PyCon US 2025 website to be one of the first to know and grab yours while supplies last!

Tutorials

Tutorials will be presented on Wednesday, May 14, 2025, and Thursday, May 15, 2025. We are accepting proposals for tutorials through December 19, 2024. Find more information on how to submit your proposal via our website and our CfP platform. Once our program committee has scheduled the selected tutorials, you will be able to add them to your conference registration.

Watch for tutorial registration launch in February 2025. Opt-in for PyCon US News and follow us on Twitter, Mastodon, and the PSF LinkedIn for the announcement.

Sponsorship and Sponsor Presentations

Sponsorship for PyCon US 2025 is open now, and you can see the details of our sponsorship options and apply directly on our Sponsorship Application page. We’re grateful to all of our sponsors, who make PyCon US possible.

For those interested in a paid speaking opportunity, Sponsor Presentations will take place Thursday, May 15, 2025. To reserve a slot for an hour-long Sponsor Presentation on the topic of your choice, please apply for Partner Level Sponsorship or higher and select the check mark next to “Sponsor Presentation.” Slots are limited and typically sell out, so please submit your request soon. Contact sponsors@python.org with any questions.

Hotels

PyCon US has contracted special rates with nearby hotels. When you complete your registration for PyCon US 2025, you will be able to book a hotel reservation on your dashboard through our official housing bureau, Orchid Events. Booking through Orchid helps support PyCon US and it is the only way to get the conference rates, so book now while supplies last!

More information can be found on the Hotels page.

Note: Beware of Housing Pirates! PyCon US or Orchid Events will not be calling delegates to sell rooms. If you are contacted by an agency other than Orchid Events offering to make your hotel reservations, we urge you to not use their services. We cannot protect you against them if you do book a reservation.

Travel Grants - Applications now Open!

Check out the Travel Grant page to learn more about the support we provide for travel, hotel, and registration to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to attend PyCon US. We actively encourage people to apply for travel grants and welcome applications from any attendees who otherwise would not be able to attend. Our goal is to support diversity and provide equity to attendees and attract Python developers at all experience levels from around the world. For questions about the application process, visit the Travel Grant FAQ page.

Cancellation Fees

Registration cancellations must be submitted in writing to pycon-reg@python.org and received by May 1, 2025, in order to receive a refund minus the $50 cancellation fee ($25 for students; waived for cancellation due to health reasons). No refunds will be granted for cancellations received after May 1, 2025, unless you must cancel for any health-related reasons (see more details in the Health & Safety Guidelines). In lieu of cancellation, you have the option to transfer your registration to another person. For details about transferring your registration, visit the registration page.

Call for Proposals - Deadline December 19th!

There’s still time to submit your proposal to present a Talk, Charla, Poster, or Tutorial at PyCon US! More information on our website and on our CfP platform.

Community Booths - Applications now Open!

Each year, we set aside booth space in the Expo Hall for nonprofit organizations and community open source projects that serve the Python community and the broader open source ecosystem. If that describes your organization or group, we’d love for you to apply for one of our complimentary Community Booths. Visit this page for more details.

What advice would you give to someone moving from another language to Python? What good programming practices are inherent to the language? Christopher Trudeau is back on the show this week, bringing another batch of PyCoder's Weekly articles and projects.

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

EMPOWERING DIVERSITY: INCLUSION FUNDS FOR UNDERREPRESENTED VOICES admin Fri, 12/06/2024 - 11:55

We are excited to introduce an initiative that not only reflects Drupal Mountain Camp's commitment to diversity, but also actively encourages the participation of underrepresented voices to promote inclusivity and diversity in the Drupal community. Open source communities were founded on the principle that diversity and varied perspectives strengthen the entire ecosystem. We are committed to providing opportunities for individuals from underrepresented groups to attend this year's event, share their experiences, and contribute to the thriving Drupal community.

 

What are Diversity Inclusion Funds?

Diversity and Inclusion funds offer complimentary tickets and financial support to facilitate individuals to participate in the Drupal Mountain Camp.

 

How to Apply: Eligibility Criteria:

To qualify, applicants should be a member of one of the following communities and are experiencing financial/economic hardship:

• Ability
• Age
• Ethnicity
• Gender
• Gender identity
• Race
• Religion
• Sexual orientation
• Socio-economic status/class
• Learning differences
• Family composition

  Application Process:

Prospective applicants can request diversity tickets by filling out an application form found on the Drupal Mountain Camp website. The application requires basic information and a concise statement explaining the potential benefits of receiving the funds. The organizing committee will assess applications, considering eligibility criteria and the availability of funds. The application deadline for the Diversity and Inclusion Fund is January 31st.

  How to Sponsor Diversity Tickets:

Sponsoring diversity tickets is an opportunity for organizations and individuals to actively contribute to a more inclusive Drupal community. By sponsoring a diversity ticket and inclusion funds, you become a part of the bridge, enabling someone to participate who might otherwise face barriers.

  Sponsorship as an Organization:

Drupal Mountain Camp offers sponsorship opportunities for Diversity & Inclusion sponsors to contribute to free diversity tickets and funds aimed at encouraging diverse participation at the event. Sponsors will receive recognition during the event, showcasing their commitment to diversity and inclusion. Any remaining funds will be allocated towards the seamless organization of the event. Please check out the Sponsorship page for more details and contact information.

  Sponsorship as an Individual:

Drupal Mountain Camp extends the opportunity for individual sponsorship of Diversity tickets. You can buy one or more "Sponsor a Diversity Ticket" on the eventfrog.ch website. Your contribution will directly support the provision of complimentary tickets to foster diversity within the community.

Join us on this exciting journey, building bridges that strengthen the Drupal community, we invite you to join us in making Drupal Mountain Camp 2025 an unforgettable celebration of unity in diversity. Together, let's create an environment where everyone feels not only welcome but integral to the shared narrative of our community.

 

Drupal Starshot Editor Fri, 12/06/2024 - 12:38

Ready for a Drupal revolution? At a recent keynote, Dries Buytaert, the mastermind behind Drupal, introduced Drupal Starshot, a groundbreaking initiative set to make building websites with Drupal incredibly simple.

"Drupal has always been known for its low-code capabilities. However, many competitors now offer similar features, and in some areas, they even surpass what Drupal provides. While Drupal is celebrated for its robustness, it can be challenging for newcomers, especially those with limited technical expertise. So in my keynote, I was excited to introduce Drupal Starshot, our "Moonshot" to make Drupal more accessible and easier to use." — said Dries.

Creating a website for a manufacturing company requires thoughtful planning and customization of functionality to meet the needs of different user groups. Drupal, as a flexible CMS, offers tools to quickly and efficiently build web pages tailored to market requirements. In this article, we’ll discuss step-by-step how to create a modern and functional website for a manufacturing company using Drupal and its Droopler distribution.

Drupal Advent Calendar day 6 - Live Preview james Fri, 12/06/2024 - 09:00

With the launch of Drupal CMS will be a new trial experience, making it easier than ever for non-technical evaluators to try Drupal, without needing to set up a local environment or any special tools.

I spoke with Matt Glaman, who was leading the Live Preview track in the initial development stage.

Matt has done a lot of amazing work to allow a webserver running Drupal to run directly in the web browser on your computer. How does this work? Matt took PHP, along with a webserver and database engine, and compiled them into WebAssembly, which is a language that runs in the browser, a bit like…

Tags

• Live preview
• Drupal Starshot

The Metatag 2.1.0 release introduces the powerful Metatag Custom Tags submodule, derived from the popular Custom Meta module. This new feature simplifies custom metadata management and enhances SEO.

The diffoscope maintainers are pleased to announce the release of diffoscope version 284. This version includes the following changes:

[ Chris Lamb ] * Simplify tests_quines.py::test_{differences,differences_deb} to use assert_diff and not mangle the expected test output. * Update some tests to support file(1) version 5.46. (Closes: reproducible-builds/diffoscope#395)

You find out more by visiting the project homepage.

Lots of KDE hacking these days, and that comes with compiling large amounts of code. Right now, I am installing, well building from source Plasma Mobile on an “old” laptop so I can test some patches natively on a touchscreen device. The machine has just two cores (hyperthreaded), so builds take rather long, especially if you build Qt and all that 80+ packages that are needed for a fully working Plasma system.
One of the tools that do an incredible job while being super flexible to use is icecream. Icecream (or “icecc“) allows you to distribute your build over multiple machines, it basically ships compile-jobs with all that’s needed to other machines on a local network, meaning you can parallelize your builds.

Icecream has this nice visualization tool, called icecream-monitor which you can stare at while your builds are running (in case you don’t have anyone handy for a sword-fight). In the screenshot you can see manta, the underpowered laptop doing a 32 parallel job build over the network. miro is my heavy workstation, 8 cores and 128GB of RAM, it duely gets the bulk of the work assigned, frame is my (Framework) laptop, which is also quite beefy, gets something to do too, but not taxed as heavily as that build monster in my basement office.
Icecream can be used with most environments that have you run your compiler locally. Different distros are no problem! Just a matching CPU architecture is needed. Icecream does its job by providing its own g++ and gcc binaries, which will relay the build jobs transparently to either your local machine or across the network. So you basically install it, adjust your PATH variable to make sure icecc’s g++ is found before your system’s compiler and start your build. Other machines you want to join in for the fun just need to run icecc-scheduler and they will be automatically discovered as build slaves on your network. If you want to further speed up builds, it works with ccache as well.

Please note that you only want to do this in a trusted environment, we’re shipping executables around the network without authorization!

Publishing Python packages used to be a daunting task, but not any more. Even better, it has become significantly more secure. Gone are the days of juggling usernames, passwords, or API tokens while relying on CLI tools. With trusted publishing, you simply provide PyPI with the details of your GitHub repository, and GitHub Actions takes care of the heavy lifting.

How to Publish Your Python Package with Trusted Publishing

I will introduce a workflow that will publish your package to TestPyPi when a tag is created (on the development branch), or to PyPi when you merge to the main branch.

Prepare Your Package for Publishing

Ensure your Python package follows PyPI’s packaging guidelines. At a minimum, you’ll need:

• A setup.py or pyproject.toml file defining your package metadata.
• Properly structured code with a clear directory layout.
• A README file to showcase your project on PyPI.

For a detailed checklist, refer to the Python Packaging User Guide.

Configure GitHub Actions in Your Repository

Let's start by creating a new GitHub action .github/workflows/test-build-publish.yml.

name: test-build-publish on: [push, pull_request] permissions: contents: read jobs: build-and-check-package: name: Build & inspect our package. runs-on: ubuntu-latest steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 - uses: hynek/build-and-inspect-python-package@v2

This action will build your package and uploads the built wheel and the source distribution (SDist) as GitHub Actions artefacts.

Next, we add a step to publish to TestPyPI. This step will run whenever a tag is created, ensuring that the build from the previous step has completed successfully. Replace PROJECT_OWNER and PROJECT_NAME with the appropriate values for your repository.

test-publish: if: >- github.event_name == 'push' && github.repository == 'PROJECT_OWNER/PROJECT_NAME' && startsWith(github.ref, 'refs/tags') needs: build-and-check-package name: Test publish on TestPyPI runs-on: ubuntu-latest environment: test-release permissions: id-token: write steps: - name: Download packages built by build-and-check-package uses: actions/download-artifact@v4 with: name: Packages path: dist - name: Upload package to Test PyPI uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@release/v1 with: repository-url: https://test.pypi.org/legacy/

This step downloads the artefacts created during the build process and uploads them to TestPyPI for testing.

In the last step, we will upload the package to PyPI when a pull request is merged into the main branch.

publish: if: >- github.event_name == 'push' && github.repository == 'PROJECT_OWNER/PROJECT_NAME' && github.ref == 'refs/heads/main' needs: build-and-check-package name: Publish to PyPI runs-on: ubuntu-latest environment: release permissions: id-token: write steps: - name: Download packages built by build-and-check-package uses: actions/download-artifact@v4 with: name: Packages path: dist - name: Publish distribution 📦 to PyPI for push to main uses: pypa/gh-action-pypi-publish@release/v1 Configure GitHub Environments

To ensure that only specific tags trigger the publishing workflow and maintain control over your release process.
Create a new environment test-release by navigating to Settings -> Environments in your GitHub repository.

Set up the environment and add a deployment tag rule.

Limit which branches and tags can deploy to this environment based on rules or naming patterns.

Limit which branches and tags can deploy to this environment based on naming patterns.

Configure the target tags.

The pattern [0-9]*.[0-9]*.[0-9]* matches semantic versioning tags such as 1.2.3, 0.1.0, or 2.5.1b3, but it excludes arbitrary tags like bugfix-567 or feature-update.

Repeat this for the release environment to protect the main branch in the same way, but this time targeting the main branch.

Set Up a PyPI Project and Link Your GitHub Repository

Create an account on TestPyPI if you don’t have one.
Navigate to your account, Publishing and add a new pending publisher.
Link your GitHub repository to the PyPI project by providing its name, your GitHub username, the repository name, the workflow name (test-build-publish.yml) and the environment name (test-release).

Repeat the above on PyPI with the environment name set to release.

Test the Workflow

Now whenever you create a tag on your development branch, it will trigger a release to be uploaded to TestPyPI and merging the development branch into main will upload a release to PyPI.

What Wasn't Covered

While this guide provides an introduction to trusted publishing workflows, there are additional steps and best practices you might consider implementing. For example, setting up branch protection rules can ensure only authorized collaborators can push tags or merge to protected branches, like main or develop. You can also enforce status checks or require pull request reviews before merging, adding another layer of quality assurance.

Have a look at my python-repository-template that covers additional enhancement to this workflow, such as requiring unit and static tests to pass, checking the package with pyroma and ensuring that your tag matches the version of your package with vercheck.

Summary

If you've been holding back on sharing your work, now is the perfect time to try trusted publishing.

• Introducing 'Trusted Publishers' The Python Package Index Blog highlights a more secure publishing method that does not require long-lived passwords or API tokens to be shared with external systems
• Publishing to PyPI with a Trusted Publisher The official PyPI documentation to get started with using trusted publishers on PyPI.
• Building and testing Python in the official GitHub docs.

In my current project I’m doing a fair amount of geometry, and one small problem I needed to solve a while back was finding whether a point is inside a cylinder.

The accepted answer for this on math.stackexchange.com wasn’t ideal — part of it was very over-complicated, and also didn’t work under some circumstances. So I contributed my own answer. In this post, in addition to the maths, I’ll give an implementation in Python.

Method

We can solve this problem by constructing the cylinder negatively:

1. Start with an infinite space

2. Throw out everything that isn't within the cylinder.

This is a classic mathematician’s approach, but it works great here, and it also works pretty well for any simply-connected solid object with only straight or concave surfaces, depending on how complex those surfaces are.

First some definitions:

• Our cylinder is defined by two points, A and B, and a radius R

• The point we want to test is P

• The vectors from the origin to points A, B and P are \(\boldsymbol{r}_A\), \(\boldsymbol{r}_B\) and \(\boldsymbol{r}_P\) respectively.

We start with the infinite space, that is we assume all points are within the cylinder until we show they aren’t.

Then we construct 3 cuts to exclude certain values of \(\boldsymbol{r}_P\).

First, a cylindrical cut of radius R about an infinite line that goes through A and B. (This was taken from John Alexiou's answer in the link above):

• The vector from point A to point B is:

  \begin{equation*} \boldsymbol{e} = \boldsymbol{r}_B-\boldsymbol{r}_A \end{equation*}

  This defines the direction of the line through A and B.

• The distance from any point P at vector \(\boldsymbol{r}_P\) to the line is:

  \begin{equation*} d = \frac{\| \boldsymbol{e}\times\left(\boldsymbol{r}_{P}-\boldsymbol{r}_{A}\right) \|}{\|\boldsymbol{e}\|} \end{equation*}

  This is based on finding the distance of a point to a line, and using point A as an arbitrary point on the line. We could equally have used B.

• We then simply exclude all points with \(d > R\).

  This can be optimised slightly by squaring both sides of the comparison to avoid two square root operations.

Second, a planar cut that throws away the space above the "top" of the cylinder, which I'm calling A.

• The plane is defined by any point on it (A will do), and any normal pointing out of the cylinder, \(-\boldsymbol{e}\) will do (i.e. in the opposite direction to \(\boldsymbol{e}\) as defined above).

• We can see which side a point is of this plane as per Relation between a point and a plane:

  The point is "above" the plane (in the direction of the normal) if:

  \begin{equation*} (\boldsymbol{r}_P - \boldsymbol{r}_A) \cdot -\boldsymbol{e} > 0 \end{equation*}

• We exclude points which match the above.

Third, a planar cut which throws away the space below the bottom of the cylinder B.

• This is the same as the previous step, but with the other end of the cylinder and the normal vector in the other direction, so the condition is:

  \begin{equation*} (\boldsymbol{r}_P - \boldsymbol{r}_B) \cdot \boldsymbol{e} > 0 \end{equation*}

Python implementation

Below is a minimal implementation with zero dependencies outside the standard lib, in which there are just enough classes, with just enough methods, to express the algorithm neatly, following the above steps exactly.

In a real implementation:

• You might separate out a Point class as being semantically different from Vec

• You could move some functions to be methods (in my real implementation, I have a Cylinder.contains_point() method, for example)

• You should probably use @dataclass(frozen=True) – immutable objects are a good default, I didn’t use them here because there aren’t needed and I’m focusing on clarity of the code.

• Conversely, if performance is more of a consideration, and you don’t have a more general need for classes like Vec and Cylinder:

  • you might use a more efficient representation, such as a tuple or list, or a numpy array especially if you wanted bulk operations.

  • you could use more generic dot product functions etc. from numpy.

  • you might inline more of the algorithm into a single function.

For clarity, I also have not implemented the optimisation mentioned in which you can avoid doing some square root operations.

from __future__ import annotations import math from dataclasses import dataclass # Implementation of https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/3518495/check-if-a-general-point-is-inside-a-given-cylinder # See the accompanying blog post http://lukeplant.me.uk/blog/posts/check-if-a-point-is-in-a-cylinder-geometry-and-code/ # -- Main algorithm -- def cylinder_contains_point(cylinder: Cylinder, point: Vec) -> bool: # First condition: distance from axis cylinder_direction: Vec = cylinder.end - cylinder.start point_distance_from_axis: float = abs( cross_product( cylinder_direction, (point - cylinder.start), ) ) / abs(cylinder_direction) if point_distance_from_axis > cylinder.radius: return False # Second condition: point must lie below the top plane. # Third condition: point must lie above the bottom plane # We construct planes with normals pointing out of the cylinder at both # ends, and exclude points that are outside ("above") either plane. start_plane = Plane(cylinder.start, -cylinder_direction) if point_is_above_plane(point, start_plane): return False end_plane = Plane(cylinder.end, cylinder_direction) if point_is_above_plane(point, end_plane): return False return True # -- Supporting classes and functions -- @dataclass class Vec: """ A Vector in 3 dimensions, also used to represent points in space """ x: float y: float z: float def __add__(self, other: Vec) -> Vec: return Vec(self.x + other.x, self.y + other.y, self.z + other.z) def __sub__(self, other: Vec) -> Vec: return self + (-other) def __neg__(self) -> Vec: return -1 * self def __mul__(self, scalar: float) -> Vec: return Vec(self.x * scalar, self.y * scalar, self.z * scalar) def __rmul__(self, scalar: float) -> Vec: return self * scalar def __abs__(self) -> float: return math.sqrt(self.x**2 + self.y**2 + self.z**2) @dataclass class Plane: """ A plane defined by a point on the plane, `origin`, and a `normal` vector to the plane. """ origin: Vec normal: Vec @dataclass class Cylinder: """ A closed cylinder defined by start and end points along the center line and a radius """ start: Vec end: Vec radius: float def cross_product(a: Vec, b: Vec) -> Vec: return Vec( a.y * b.z - a.z * b.y, a.z * b.x - a.x * b.z, a.x * b.y - a.y * b.x, ) def dot_product(a: Vec, b: Vec) -> float: return a.x * b.x + a.y * b.y + a.z * b.z def point_is_above_plane(point: Vec, plane: Plane) -> bool: """ Returns True if `point` is above the plane — that is on the side of the plane which is in the direction of the plane `normal`. """ # See https://math.stackexchange.com/a/2998886/78071 return dot_product((point - plane.origin), plane.normal) > 0 # -- Tests -- def test_cylinder_contains_point(): # Test cases constructed with help of Geogebra - https://www.geogebra.org/calculator/tnc3arfm cylinder = Cylinder(start=Vec(1, 0, 0), end=Vec(6.196, 3, 0), radius=0.5) # In the Z plane: assert cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(1.02, 0, 0)) assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(0.98, 0, 0)) # outside bottom plane assert cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(0.8, 0.4, 0)) assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(0.8, 0.5, 0)) # too far from center assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(0.8, 0.3, 0)) # outside bottom plane assert cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(1.4, -0.3, 0)) assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(1.4, -0.4, 0)) # too far from center assert cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(6.2, 2.8, 0)) assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(6.2, 2.2, 0)) # too far from center assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(6.2, 3.2, 0)) # outside top plane # Away from Z plane assert cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(1.02, 0, 0.2)) assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(1.02, 0, 1)) # too far from center assert not cylinder_contains_point(cylinder, Vec(0.8, 0.3, 2)) # too far from center, and outside bottom plane

It’s a great blessing to work alongside outstanding women and an enormous joy to see their efforts and contributions recognized.

We’re happy to announce our new board for the 2024-2025 term:

• Anders Hammarquist
• Aris Nivorils
• Artur Czepiel (Chair)
• Cyril Bitterich
• Ege Akman
• Mia Bajić (Vice Chair)
• Shekhar Koirala

You can read more about them in their nomination post at https://www.europython-society.org/list-of-eps-board-candidates-for-2024-2025/. The minutes and the video recording of the General Assembly 2024 will be published soon.

Together, we will continue to serve the community and head off to the preparations for EuroPython 2025!

Automatically tag articles Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/05/2024 - 07:00 Tags Website management Content Management Drupal Planet Artificial Intelligence

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Today, another automation using the Drupal #AI module -- automatically tag your articles.

With the AI module, its AI Automators submodule, and a provider configured, you can add an automation to any field. With a Tag field on your content, you can edit the field definition and "Enable AI Automator". Give it a reasonable prompt, and it will tag your content for you.

Like most of the AI integrations, the great thing is you can easily edit the tags later if you want to highlight something specific, or if it comes up with something inappropriate.