>From a request of a friend that contributed code to TurboGears, I kept
notes from when I started looking at TurboGears until I understood the
basics. Just a quick word about my background. Most of my experience
lies with Java and some Perl. Before last week, I did not know
anything about Python besides the name. I browsed through Python
basics using "Dive into Python"
(http://diveintopython.org/toc/index.html) so I'm not claiming to be an
expert or even to be familiar with Python
The following is the compilation of my notes:
Setup
* was a little hard to determine which determine which file to
download... the main page says tgsetup.py, but windows installation
page http://docs.turbogears.org/1.0/InstallWindows says ez_setup.py...
i tried the former but it didnt quite work (probably because i did it
wrong) so then i tried the latter method, which worked... a little
confusing with two different methods
Brian's TurboGears Tutorial (http://docs.turbogears.org/1.0/TodoList)
* when going through Brian's TurboGears Tutorial, i think it might
be a little out of date, because during the first few steps, it asked
me Do you need identity (username/passwords) in this project?", which
was not covered in the tutorial
* for MySQL you need to set a length for email in the User class
(dont know if this applies for SQLite)
* What's the difference between UnicodeCol and StringCol?
* "In addition, each user should have their own resource in the
Userscontroller"... i had no idea what he meant by "resource" until i
kept reading... i wish that what we were trying to do was explained
briefly... also, it would be nice if the code was commented
* I find it strange sometimes when after i make changes, the
changes appear at localhost:8080 (the server automatically restarts
after i save)... but then other times, even though it automatically
restarts, i still need to manually shut down and then restart... im not
sure if this is a consistent thing, but i noticed it for the template
tutorial
* i also had no idea what templates were when i started
* i dont know if this is possible but having links to python docs
for built-in functions would be nice because ppl (me) tend to forget
things rather quickly what they do
* while trying the form handling tutorial, i get the error
TypeError: decoding Unicode is not supported... i fixed it with email =
email.encode('utf-8')
* doesnt say what cherrypy.HTTPRedirect does and how does this
differ from redirect() used in 20min screencast?
* should have a link to mochikit docs... i had no idea where
getElementsByTagAndClassName() came from until i found Mochikit docs
myself
* between editItem and saveItem, it would be better with more
descriptions... it is not clear what field[0..2] is referring to
anymore in saveItem, especially if one isnt quite thinking
* i dont think its clear where var showChanges = function(editBox,
button, data) {...} gets its 3 parameters since its simply sent through
like d.addCallback(showChanges, editBox, button);... in fact, even
after reading mochikit docs, im still unsure but i think its because
its chained
* at the end of Brian's tutorial, it mentioned advanced topics
about TurboGears, which i wish was in another tutorial
20min Screencast (http://docs.turbogears.org/1.0/Wiki20/Page1)
* while watching the screencast, i had no idea where publish_parts
came from... after perusing and googling, it was still difficult to see
a decent example... i learn best with examples, not descriptions...
compared to java, java api has much more concrete examples than python
docs... otherwise, python is definitely much more elegant and easy to
learn
* <div py:replace="XML(data)"> should have some explanation as to
what XML does, or have a link that points to an API somewhere
* in case people dont want to try it out themselves, it might be
helpful to include screenshots or perhaps a working tutorial site of
what the page would look like after each addition in the written 20-min
wiki tutorial (because the screencast would take too long to see)...
for example, after watching the screencast, i now look at the written
tutorial, but i dont want to actually program it, so screenshots would
have been useful for me
* the written example explained a bit more of what publish_parts
was but the explanation itself was difficult to find... also, it still
doesnt explain exactly what it does and why we need it to grab html
data from the database
* which reminds me... @expose was not explained in either
tutorial... but i can guess what it does... still would be nice to be
explained in detail though
* a finished source code available for download (controllers.py,
models.py, templates, etc.) would have been useful for those that have
watched the screencast and do not want to program it but still want to
test it out
* the first tutorial did things somewhat differerently (im thinking
of the redirects) than in this tutorial... im not sure what the
difference is, if any... cherrpy.HTTPredirect vs. turbogears.redirect?
Overall
* more explanation of the 3rd party functions (and perhaps links)
* API needed... difficult to program without it
* include concrete examples and results (what the examples will
produce) in the API, if possible, otherwise it will be as confusing as
the 3rd party docs
* screenshots
* inconsistencies between the two tutorials? e.g. redirect
* i know that this isn't up to TurboGears, but web hosting options
is really important to casual users such as myself as well as
pricing... i know that i can get a PHP host for $5-7/month but a Python
host are less popular and TurboGears hosts are even fewer in number and
in order to sign up with WebFaction, I need to pay $4-5 more/month
Continuing the last point in "Overall"... in the
http://www.turbogears.org/docs/deployment/hosting.html page, under
WestHost... it says that TurboGears can be run under "straight
proxying". What does that mean?
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