Sarah Abderemane's Website - django

Me and Mentorship

2026-05-06T18:00:00+02:00

Hi there.. it’s been a while as usual… 😄

Today I would like to talk about mentoring. It’s been a constant in my life. I have been on both sides: mentee and mentor. I can tell you that you learn so much from this exchange.

Being a mentee is a way to learn from an expert or just people who know more than yourself. Those people you truly admire for their work. The mentees don’t even always tell how much they admire their mentors.

On the reverse, being a mentor is a good way to learn how to share your knowledge the best way. You watch the person you’re mentoring grow and make their own decisions, without ever having to ask you for advice in the end, because you’ve given them the tools to find the answers on their own. One day, perhaps, they’ll take the time to thank you, because without even realizing it, you’ve changed their life.

It’s crazy, isn’t it? I love mentoring because it’s a special and unique exchange: you feel close to the other person, because when you’re a mentor, you see a younger version of yourself in your mentee, and the mentee sees you as what they might one day become. I’m sure many people don’t see mentoring exactly the way I do, but it’s an extremely rewarding experience.

Mentoring is a great way to learn, whether you’re the mentee or the mentor. Yes, mentors learn from the experience as well. How can you make sure your mentee has understood what you meant? How can you clearly explain something that seems obvious to you to the person sitting across from you? The mentee’s questions help us discover aspects we had never considered before. There is so much to learn!

Google Summer of Code mentorship

Speaking about mentoring, I’m going to get my hands dirty again and mentor someone for Google Summer of Code (GSoC) for the Django organization this year! 🥳

It will be my first time to mentor for Google Summer of Code, I’m really excited! I will be mentoring Keha Chandrakar with my amazing co-mentor and co-chair of the Website Working Group Saptak Sengupta✨

The project is Unified Dark Mode and UI Consistency for Django’s Issue Tracker, it would be a nice addition for the community.

This project means a lot to me. I have previously contributed to the addition of the dark mode in the Django website. It was my first major contribution to Django! When you start your contribution journey for a huge project like Django, it’s exciting and impressive! I did contribute without any mentor but I definitely had help along the way since the Django community is so welcoming and helpful. I learned a lot through this contribution and now it’s used by so many people. Being Keha’s mentor is a good way for me to give back and help someone else on a topic I know pretty well!

You could be the mentor

I have been part of the Djangonaut Space organization, where we are recruiting people as mentors. This organization and the Django organization are always looking for mentors. If you have already contributed to an open source project related to the Django ecosystem or are maintaining one and you are willing to take the time to help someone in their contribution journey, consider mentoring as an option to get new contributors to your project. Djangonaut Space has multiple cohorts, sign up to the newsletter and mention your interest in mentoring: being a navigator (technical mentor) or a captain (community mentor).

Who knows, this might be your new co-maintainer, your new teammate or your new code reviewer? There are things we can definitely learn on our own and some things you will only learn from someone else.

That’s it for me!

DjangoCon Africa 2025

2025-08-28T04:00:00+02:00

Hi there, it's been a while as usual. I have been for the first time to DjangoCon Africa few weeks ago. It was in Arusha, Tanzania.

Tim Schilling has written an excellent blog post about his experience at DjangoCon Africa, you can read his blog post. He collected the other abstracts from the conference participants.

First DjangoCon Africa

It's always a special feeling when it's your first time in a conference. You meet new people, discover how the conference is run and familiarize yourself with the organization and how it is supposed to work.

I know DjangoCon Europe well, I have been an organizer, a volunteer and an attendee. One thing you have to know is DjangoCon events are run by volunteers for free. I really would like to thank the organizers and volunteers behind this conference. I know it's a lot of work behind the scenes, but gathering people in one place and seeing folks connecting and share knowledge it's a priceless joy. If you want to help the community globally, this is a really good way to contribute.

Moreover, I would like to thank all the sponsors that made this conference possible. This is particularly important to me because the community must be represented as a whole across all continents and conference like this one is the best way to show that.

Thibaud and I showing the DjangoCon Africa UbuCon Africa wall

I am proud of this picture, Me and Thibaud Colas, Vice President and President, in front the wall of DjangoCon Africa UbuCon Africa with all sponsors logos. Sponsoring is crucial for the success of such events and if you care about diversity and inclusion in tech, supporting events like DjangoCon Africa is a great way to make a difference.

As a board member, I am glad to have been able to participate in almost all Django events organized around the world so far to be in direct contact with the community.

Arusha, Tanzania

I have never been to South of Africa except the country I have roots, Comoros Islands. Go to DjangoCon Africa was a good way to discover that and learn about Tanzania. I really enjoyed Arusha, it's a lovely city. It was a real change of landscape for me, coming from Paris.

Road with shops in Arusha, Tanzania

It's also a good opportunity to discover the local culture, food and wildlife. I had the time to do a Safari to Ngorongoro Crater with my lovely friend Tim Schilling, go to the markets and try the local food.

Safari with Tim Schilling

Also, you see the challenge people are facing there and doing their best to overcome them. Despite this, people are welcoming and friendly. Always trying to help.

The conference

Since it's a new conference for me, I tried my best to talk with as many folks as possible. I was amazed by all the folks that came to me to talk, just for chatting or thanks me for my keynote and/or get feedback for their projects. Usually it's the reverse, I will go to folks to talk to them. If you were at DjangoCon Africa and didn't connect with me, you can still do it!

Outside of the local community, this conference gave me the opportunity to met old friends and new friends. Conferences are a great way to see your international friends and meet new folks from everywhere. I know folks from all over the world, that's really cool no? 😁

Everyone in front the wall before the end of the conference

Something I love is to meet folks from Djangonaut Space in person in addition to the local community. I was able to meet Salim Nuru, Philip Nareth and Tim Schilling in person.

The Djangonaut Space crew at DjangoCon Africa 2025

I'm sad Rahmat Akintola wasn't able to come, next time hopefully.

Now I can say I have seen all the founders and co-founders of Djangonaut Space in person 🚀

Tim is one of my very good friends, I was so happy to meet him in person and be able to support him for his keynote. It's unbelievable that was the first time we met in person, after all the time we spent together on Djangonaut Space. Remote relationships are real.

I was glad to finally see folks who I have chatted with online occasionally like Julius Boakye.

Opening Keynote

I was deeply honored to give the opening keynote of DjangoCon Africa: "50 shades of green - One contribution to the Django world". For those who are interested, you have the link of the slides . I will see to add the transcript later.

If my keynote has any impact on you, even years later, please tell me, I would like to hear your story!

Unfortunately, talks were not recorded at this conference. I hope it will be the case next time, some content deserves to be shared beyond Africa.

Each interaction has left a mark on my journey, and I look forward to continuing these conversations in the future. I got some contacts for potential collaborations and projects, and I'm excited to see where these connections and projects will lead.

As I mentioned in my keynote, I would like to encourage folks to contribute to Django and open source in general. There are many ways to contribute, whether it's through code, documentation, internationalization or community support. Every little bit helps! And even if it feels scary to start contributing, remember that everyone was a beginner at some point. Myself included.

So don't be afraid to take that first step and get involved. The Django community is a friendly and welcoming place.

This trip was especially meaningful for me. Despite navigating some personal challenges, the warmth and generosity of the community helped me set those worries aside. My time at DjangoCon Africa was truly enriching, and I look forward to the possibility of returning in 2027.

See you next time DjangoCon Africa! 💚

DSF Vice President 2025

2025-02-20T12:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it's been a while, as always 🙂 I had a though end of the 2024 year and beginning of 2025 (family loss) so I didn't do my usual year in review unfortunately, but I took the time to write my recent update: I'm the new Vice President of the Django Software Foundation 🎉

This is such an honor to serve on the board of the Django Software Foundation, and it's even more the case as the Vice President. I'm particularly glad to have this role since it's a way to connect to our members and I already had lovely emails responses while onboarding new DSF members.

Vice President tasks

The Vice President handle everything related to requests of new DSF members. Currently you can apply for yourself or apply for someone else. After that, it's reviewed and voted by the board for approval or not.

If you planning to submit a DSF member, please add as many informations as you can, it's really helping us to know if the person meet the criterias to approuve the member.

My tasks are:

send emails to approved members
add them to the mailing list used for the voting for the future boards and steering council
add them to the private DSF member section in the forum
attribute them the DSF role
follow up for any specific inquiries related to current or onboarding members

Besides that, I'm also the fallback of the President. If Thibaud is sick or can't do something related to his role, I will be the one to fill up the place. No fear, right? 😛

As Thibaud was saying in his blog, there is some discovery to do to be able to fill the role as people and ourselves expected. I'm sure we will figure it out and document it 💪🏽 The President seems to be a role with many things to do and I will do my best to help him as much as I can.

My plans for 2025 and the future

I have been doing a lot of volunteering last year, one thing which is hard, is get a good balance to be able to do everything you wanted and take time for yourself. In function of your personality, it can be even harder to say no to a topic you care about just because you don't have enough time. That's why, my first plan is to improve processes and document things internally for the Vice President in case I decide to not continue to serve the board.

This year I would like to automate partially or completely the process of onboarding a new DSF member to have less time gap in terms of announcement of members approval and the time they are actually onboarded and added. This will be also a way to allow the Vice President to spend time on other things too.

I will continue my work related what I mentioned in my statement and will do my best to represent the Django Software Foundation and this nice framework and people behind it around the world 💚

I will see to achieve things I haven't done as many actions as I wanted (Accessibility, Django website etc.) and support other board members and any folks who are happy to step in, in the Django governance and Django work that fulfill the DSF's mission.

DSF Board, AMA after 8 months

2024-11-16T06:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it's been a while, I always have many ideas to write and no time, but I try to find some to talk about the Django Software Foundation (DSF) board. I might forget things to say so I might do a DSF blog series. This time I decided to re-write this post and directly answer questions I was asked on social media or in person.

DISCLAIMER: This is my personal opinion, I do not intend to blame anyone except myself. This is my reflection from the past few months, including the fact I’m still learning about the board.

How did you become a DSF board member?

I was elected by DSF members. If you want to learn more about DSF membership, you can check the django website and if you think you or someone else are suitable, please apply. I started to serve on the board from January 2024, and my term will end in December 2025. Each board member have 2 term year and we have 4 specific officer roles:

President
Vice President
Treasurer
Secretary

I don’t have any specific role, I was planning to see how it’s going and then see what I can do. And also, how it will go with my current tasks and (huge) to-do list.

What’s different from your expectations?

I think coming back from Djangonaut Space organization I was expecting some similarities in terms of communication and organisation but it wasn't the case. I was expecting more asynchronous communication and interaction since we might all be busy for many reasons.

A bit more defined things like who should answer emails and what about spams for example.

1h of board meetings a month is not enough to me and some topics are not really discussed outside the meetings.

What do you think needs to happen in the future to set the board and the DSF up for long term success?

Put more effort in fundraising, I believe having more money will help to take actions in more domains.

Also, have a better link with the community. Sometimes we have issues where having feedback and support from the community would be helpful to address them.

How many of your DSF board specific initiatives are things that could be done NOT being a board member?

For example, solving the problem of onboarding and nurturing new contributors is tackled by Djangonaut Space on our own initiative. But approving grants and selecting a DjangoCon Europe team can only be done by board members.

So many things can be done without being a board member actually 😁

Help people in the Django forum or Django discord
Moderate the forum and discord
Initiate a working group
Participate to a working group
Help with the content of the Django’s website
Submit people as DSF members
Create a local Django community (ie: Django Paris meetup)
Search for community around the world to add to the local community page
Contribute to djangoproject.com / code.djangoproject.com website
Contribute to the Django Discord bot
Contribute to Django core to improve processes
Contribute to a Django team (ie: Triage and review team)
Talk to people who could be part of a working group
Volunteer in Django/DSF presence in events (ie: help run a Django booth)

Small ways to get involved: If I only have 5 hours per month I can contribute, where do you need people?

They are many ways to contribute depends on the things you are more interested:

Immediate actions

Help social media WG to provide content or review content
Help Djangonauts on the forum or on discord, answer questions
Retweet/retooth Django posts

Might need review / futures actions

Help on moderation (for example Reddit /r/django)
DSF Fundraising WG might need extra help to reach potential sponsors
If possible, come on the DSF office hours to help answers or contribute to the conversation
I would like at some point to have a content team for the website and help would be helpful here

If you are interested in any of those actions please fill this form, so I can reach you later if there are any specific needs.

If and how the DSF is setting and tracking goals for diversity and inclusion?

We have a public statement for diversity and some ongoing DEI improvements.

Currently it’s more to define what is the existing state and the evolution with statistics to be able to set goals.

The actions that had been taken is mostly to show how diverse the community is in the Django world, which means: the website, elections, the members and Django communication tools:

The local community page
Recognize DSF members from all over the world
Small initiatives to help to get a good representation of the diversity of the community in DSF board elections
Talk about the current DSF members
…

Could be even more, having Django participate in the Outreachy program and so on.

What are the tasks and time commitments?

Regular tasks as a baseline and then ad-hoc tasks/personal initiatives with rough times

We have a meeting each month and it lasts one hour. During this time, we are reviewing all current and new business with all members and the assistant Catherine.

Except that, we have async communication on slack.

Since I don't have a specific role, it's mostly promotion and representation of the Django Software Foundation and following DSF working groups as a board of liaison. We have a contact form so I have to check emails and reply if I can.

In more ad-hoc tasks/personal initiatives, I don’t know precisely the time but I think it depends on the task, if it’s research on a topic or doing something for a working group. I’m involved in 3 working groups, which means that there might be meetings or actions that I may have to do related to that.

It’s hard to explicitly define times, but I think I could say around 5+ hours a month, depending on the need and my health.

What areas do you think the board could improve on and where does it lack skills/expertise?

I think the board could improve in promotion: get sponsors, offer sponsorship package in function of the level of sponsoring, get contacts…

And I believe in terms of legal considerations and marketing we are lacking expertise. For example Django is known from developers for its stability and smooth upgrades, this is something which is not promoted, or at least poorly by saying it’s “boring”.

Any "behind the curtain" stuff? Any pain points?

Should I really share behind the curtain stuff? 😁

I think the major pain point for me was communication and documentation.

Many things are not documented or partially and with all different boards I imagine things have been lost over time. It’s hard to understand everything when you are new.

Also, I would have preferred to have the tasks shared or potentially allow/push people to ask for help if no time or whatever reason, especially when they have a role which can ask a lot. It took me a lot of time to figure out who writes our news pages. Access and the processes to ask for access are not always clear to me. This kind of thing should be documented somewhere.

How does the board decide things (do you vote on everything)?

As I was saying before, we have a board meeting each month and we have a precise agenda that we are reviewing together:

Grant submissions
DjangoCon proposal
DSF memberships
DSF working group

All of those areas are voted on each time if there is anything to vote on, so we are making sure that we have a quorum before the start of the meeting, otherwise it will be rescheduled. We also discuss things related to the DSF organisation like bylaws, trademark etc. but things aren’t always under vote except if there is a major change. All board members can add a topic to the agenda.

What things folks should involve the board with and what can they "just do".

Some DSF working groups already exist, all members are identifiable and the way to join the working group.

Everyone can help a working group without asking a board member.

Everyone can create a DSF working group, but this needs at least one board member to follow and guide the working group (=board liaison) with the DSF board vision and for reporting. When the proposal is ready, the board liaison will bring it to the board meeting to be voted on by the board.

There are also initiatives like Djangonaut Space, Django News etc. which don’t rely on the board at all, if you have an idea which might solve something in the Django community, please do it!

The major thing which involves the board is creating a new DjangoCon since the name is registered under the Django trademark with certain criterias. You can still create smaller events without the board, and some of them are registered in the local community page.

Your personal reflections - is this a joy or a chore?

Hard to say, I have experienced both.

I was frustrated to not be able to help in some cases or see people complaining but I didn’t get the information at the board level directly where it could make a difference. So I keep notes and try to make changes but sometimes it’s even just a matter of time or actions, it doesn’t go like you wanted and you’re disappointed with the result.

I also enjoy people thanking me for some actions I have done, see them amazed with the DSF membership recognition or just see people I know from other spaces (Djangonaut Space, Discord…) taking part in Django community contributions in some way, even if it doesn’t end as expected like elections, this is really nice to see all folks from all over the world gather for one thing in common.

Where are you at with your goals? Are we on track? If we aren't, what resources would it take to accomplish them.

If we retake my personal statement from the Django blog post, this is the current state:

Increase fundraising: in progress with DSF Fundraising WG
- improving communication: ideas was shared with DSF social media WG, missing coordination with DSF Fundraising WG when the team have everything ready for
- highlighting sponsors: this will be reviewed with the future DSF Website WG with coordination of DSF Fundraising WG
Develop our community: in progress with many new DSF members and newcomers
- specifically helping existing and new contributor: sharing the community and meeting people in other events.
Working group for mentorship: Discussion initiated, I’m involved in too many working groups, I have now a volunteer to lead this project ✨ She will need people and resources to help her, an issue will be open soon, keep an eye on that.
Push accessibility in the framework: in progress, we have new members and many ideas and discussions on going. This also rely a lot on DSF Website WG which will be soon kickstarted.
Django's diversity and expand the community: in progress, have a better representation in Django like candidate elections or people shown in the website.

I believe we are on track but I can’t do that alone, especially for social media, we will need people to help us to promote and write content.

There are also topics I would like to have more people involved in:

DSF Code of Conduct WG
Moderation of Discord and Forum
Future team to write content of the website
Get folks feedbacks in order to make improvements
Get sponsors feedbacks

What did you achieve?

I’m happy with what I have achieved, even though I was thinking I would have done more.

Represent DSF at some events (e.g. FOSDEM)
Django booth at EuroPython
DjangoCon Europe lightning talk
DjangoCon Europe DSF panel
Handle DSF roles on discord server
Reply to some questions on discord, forum or email
Help to quickstart the DSF Fundraising WG
Add local communities in local communities page
Follow-up on draft of the DSF Website WG
Help on the review of DjangoCon proposal of next year
Help the social media WG
Research on the DSF past board and history
Help on the next Django developer survey
Submit many people for DSF membership
Listing of potential requests that Djangonauts would like

What would you like to achieve?

Automate partially or completely the addition of new DSF Individual Members
Improve fundraising to be able to take more actions
Improve the website with the DSF Website WG
Create a content website (WG?) team
Create a mentorship / leadership WG
Create a way to get feedback from the community
Improve forms for futures elections
Create a DSF members blog series
Create some “did you know” social media post related to DSF

What do you wish the community knew that would make your role easier?

This is actually some time commitment if you want to do things outside of the monthly meeting. Your work and extra activities take time and some days this is hard to work on open source.

We need to increase funding but the best way to start is with you, dear lovely reader. If you are working for a company, you should ask if they are sponsoring Django if they use it and tell them why they should do that. If you don’t know what to tell for why, you can start by the fact it will help pay our Fellows, the 2 incredible women who are maintaining the tool every day they are relying on and keep the security and improvements on it.

Many things could be solved by having money, but not only. Sometimes what we are missing is people. Having mentors, having people to answer questions, people who moderate platforms, people who contribute to code source.

What made you laugh?

My onboarding, it was definitely not what I expected, even if I didn’t expect so much to be honest.

Would you do it again?

I think yes, not because this is particularly fun, but more because some things can change only at some level, and I think I can be helpful here.

If you had impostor syndrome, how do you deal with it?

Impostor syndrome is, unfortunately, my best friend, always there I don’t know why lol

I think it's a question of thinking about the best way, even if I'm not the most competent person, I think I have something to contribute, and that's why I was elected.

TIL: Django constraints

2023-08-12T10:00:00+02:00

Hi there,

I have done some work with constraint recently and I wanted to write something on it just to remind myself. I hope it’s useful to you too.

Database constraints are really useful to make sure each row is valid before to save it. You have two type of constraints you can use just before to record a new line in a table in Django: CheckConstraint and UniqueConstraint.

I use PostgreSQL which has powerful tools, you can set database constraint according what is implemented by Django.

Explanations are always better with an example so here is a constraint to avoid date overlapping between the start date and the end date:

class Event(models.Model):
   start_at = models.DateField()
   end_at = models.DateField()

   class Meta:
      constraints = [
         models.CheckConstraint(
               check=models.Q(start_at__lt=end_at),
               name='start_at_before_end_at'
         ),
         models.UniqueConstraint(
               fields=['start_date', 'end_date'],
               name='unique_event_dates'
         ),
      ]

The CheckConstraint ensures that the start_at is before the end_at. The UniqueConstraint ensures that there are no two events with the same start_date and end_date.

I discovered that if you want to make a UniqueConstraint in Django, it considers NULL values as distinct, which I didn’t want in my case.

Going back to my previous example, here we have 2 records:

id	start_date	end_date
1	NULL	2019-12-31
2	NULL	2019-12-31

Both have the same end_date and start_date set to NULL.

These two records will be considered unique because a NULL is not equal to another NULL in SQL, so the two records are considered distinct.

You can use WITH DISTINCT NULL VALUES with PostgreSQL 15 but in my case I was using an older version, of course, so I needed to use another option.

If you want to make sure that NULL values are not considered distinct in the UniqueConstraint, you can use the hash function with the unique=True attribute instead.

Here is an example of the hash function with the unique value based on the previous code with the Event class. A sha256_hash field which combines all the fields I want in an hash:

import hashlib
import json

class Event(models.Model):
   start_at = models.DateField()
   end_at = models.DateField()
   fancy_field = models.CharField()
   sha256_hash = models.BinaryField(
      max_length=32,
      unique=True,
      null=True
   )

   def __save__(self, *args: Any, **kwargs: Any) -> None:
      super().__save__(*args, **kwargs)
      self.sha256_hash = self.compute_sha256_hash()
      self.save()

   def compute_sha256_hash(self) -> bytes:
      json_object = {
         field: getattr(self, field)
         for field in (
               "start_at",
               "end_at",
               "fancy_field"
         )
      }

      # Forces datetime to use timestamp due to inconsistency
      # in timezone format.
      json_object["start_at"] = self.start_at.timestamp()
      json_object["end_at"] = self.end_at.timestamp()

      json_repr = json.dumps(
         json_object,
         sort_keys=True,
         indent=4,
         cls=DjangoJSONEncoder,
      )
      return hashlib.sha256(json_repr.encode("utf-8")).digest()

The sha256_hash is unique and shouldn’t allow null values, but with the blank=True and null=True attributes, it can have null values. It’s needed then to populate the existing values if there are some.

What if there is existing data in the table?

In order to do that, we change the attribute to allow null values :

class Event(models.Model):
   start_at = models.DateField()
   end_at = models.DateField()
   fancy_field = models.CharField()
   sha256_hash = models.BinaryField(
      max_length=32,
      unique=True,
      null=True,
      blank=True
   )
   …

After that, we can populate the value with a django command in by filtering the existing Event table where the field sha256_hash is null, and call the method in order the create the sha256_hash value with the method compute_sha256_hash of the class.

That’s it for me!

DjangoCon Europe 2023: from attendee to organizer

2023-06-14T14:36:00+02:00

Hi there, I hope you’re fine. A few weeks ago, I was at DjangoCon Europe in Edinburgh. I’m not sure I have completely recovered from tiredness, but it was awesome!

I’m hooked on this event. My first DjangoCon was in 2021 in remote, due to COVID, and many people told me “it’s really different in real life, you should definitely try once”.

And… I did!

I participated in DjangoCon Europe last year in Porto, it was amazing. I really liked the conference and meeting people, some of them that I have talked to virtually, so there was real joy seeing them in person. It was awesome. This conference helped me to become more involved in the community and learn so many things. To be honest, I don’t have the best English but I was able to understand and be understood. If you have never been to a DjangoCon, you should definitely go to one. It’s truly worth it.

What you need to know is that each DjangoCon Europe is run by volunteers, and the chairs have to send a proposal to the Django Software Foundation (DSF) for approval. This conference almost did not happen if you see the DSF’s post about it. I didn’t want that to happen so I proposed myself as a volunteer. I joined the current team especially for the website and be part of the Code of Conduct team 💖

Being an organizer is a different way of fun. You don’t enjoy the conference the same way, it can be exhausting, but you really enjoy the fact of seeing the conference happening and being a success especially when you know all things that happened behind the scenes.

When you look at people:

meeting and laughing together
finding their future job
finding new friends
finding help for a specific project
etc.

It's a priceless joy ✨

I learn many things by being “on the other side”.

I didn't understand how hard it is to get a visa depending on the country you're coming from. The rules are always different. I didn’t imagine how it can cost so much to host an event virtually when you have limited funds. Each detail counts, when trying to make the best event for everyone.

I’m really glad to be part of this community, and I hope to do my best to welcome people and be friendly as much as I've been welcomed myself.

If you would like to give back to Django and the community, you should consider DjangoCon Europe 2024 as a way to do so. Being an organizer or a volunteer is a great way to contribute, and it doesn't require the ability to code.

I will end this post by saying that “I joined a conference, I stayed for the community” 💚

Thoughts on DjangoCon Europe 2021

2021-06-07T12:00:00+02:00

Hi there, it has been a while since my last post, but I’ m now returning from a great conference: DjangoCon Europe.

It was my first virtual conference. Thanks to the organizers, it was well done despite the difficult circumstances. We had a gather.town to meet people, talks hosted in loudswarm, which worked great! It was very interesting. There were great talks and met amazing people!

I’m also exhausted lol. I guess it’s another experience as I imagine and due to the return of people who did it in real life. I hope to have the ability to attend to another one in person. As people said, you come for the syntax and stay for the community!

I gave my first lightning talk at the DjangoCon: “Run Django tests with GitHub Actions” which was a little introduction to GitHub Actions and how to use it with Docker services. I’m completely nervous about things like that but I did it. I’m happy I received some positive feedback. I know also what to improve if I choose to undertake the experience again 🙂

If you have one in mind, go for it. You will never regret and it’s a good experience. You will help someone or make someone discover something that you didn’t imagine you could. For the sprints, it was complicated for me to manage the two days, but I was able to be mentor for DjangoGirls on Saturday. It was a good experience for me.

How to create Github Actions to run tests with services ?

2019-11-05T22:12:00+01:00

I’ve been digging GitHub Actions since I received access to the beta. GitHub Actions is generally available since November 11, 2019 and I can explain to you. 🎉

French version of the article right here.

Photo by Yancy Min on Unsplash

What is it ?

Github Action is a solution for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD). It’s a new feature from Github, which is displayed as a tab in your repository. Its operations are triggered by Git events such as a commit push. In order to create a new sequence of events to be run on a commit push, we must create a set of commands which will be carried out according to the specifications of the project. This service is designed to perform processes automatically and continuously for collaborative work on a Git repo once implemented. It should be noted that Github Action is based on Docker, so it’s recommended to have some knowledge about it to use it.

Write your action

An action contains several elements necessary to perform a process: the on event that corresponds to the Github event: push, pull request, etc. During the beta however, only the push and pull request triggers are available.

on: [push, pull_request]

It is of course possible to define the scope of your action, so it does specific tasks on certain branches of your repository but not on others. For example, this may include automatic deployment to a server from the staging branch but not from the dev branch.

on:
 push:
  branches:
  - staging

Then we have the jobs. In practice, a job is a series of steps performed in an orderly manner. It has 2 important elements: the environment and the steps to be taken by the service.

The runs-on parameter defines the environment in which the action is performed:

runs-on: ubuntu-latest

There are several possible virtual environments for the execution of your action, this can be useful so that it corresponds to the specificities of each one. From Ubuntu 19.10 to Windows 2016, you have the choice 😉

It should be noted that each job is performed in a new instance of the virtual environment.

So if you want to perform a series of actions with a link between them, you may want consider doing it in the same job. But it is possible to create job dependencies with the need parameter:

jobs:
 job1:
 job2:
  need: job1

In this case, job2 will only run when job1 has been completed.

Then, we have all the steps to perform during the process. With a view to continuous integration, the aim is to launch the tests automatically. However, a number of elements must be defined before the tests can be performed!

This set is defined by the keyword steps. Each step requires at least one element to be performed, i.e. one of its elements:

the uses keyword to use a specific element:

a public action
an action in the same repository
an action on the Docker Hub or on the Docker public register

the run keyword to launch a command in bash (knowing that there are several ways to execute a command if necessary)

Finally, we associate the parameter name to know which step it represents. An example being always more meaningful, so here is a job to test a Django project:

jobs:
 tests:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest

   steps:
   - uses: actions/checkout@v1
   - name: Set up Python 3.5.7
   - uses: actions/setup-python@v1
     with:
      python-version: 3.5.7

   - name: Install dependencies
     run: pip install -r requirements.txt
   - name: Run tests
     run: python manage.py test

Here the job tests consist of:

install Python 3.5.7 on the Ubuntu environment
install the dependencies
start the tests

For tests in real conditions, a database is needed, hence the implementation of services.

Add a service to your action

How do we do it? Very simple, it is similar to the definition of a service in a docker-compose.yml but with far fewer parameters.

We use the keyword services with :

the definition of the Docker image to be used
the list of ports to be exposed of the service
a list of environment variables
a list of volumes

Not all of these elements are required but good to know.

In concrete terms, it looks like this, for a Postgres service:

services:
 image: postgres
  env:
  - POSTGRES_USER: postgres
  - POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
  - POSTGRES_BD: postgres
  ports:
  - 5432/tcp
  options: --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5

We need the Docker image to launch, the port to expose and the name of the service. There is a way to transmit environment values or Docker options as shown in the example above. Sensitive values can be defined with secret key.

In addition, it is sometimes necessary to require a service status feedback to establish a connection. Therefore, an element is defined that checks the health of the service to know when it is operational (also called a health check). I took up the example made by Chris Patterson and Mike Coutermarsh for PostgreSQL.

In case you don’t have a health check available, we pause the process execution with the command sleep , yes it’s not great, I grant you…

All this is very good, but we have to make the link between the service and our application. We will do it through the port and for the host it will be localhost since the service is executed directly in the Ubuntu machine in our example. Otherwise it would have been the name of the service.

In the previous example, the machine port 5432 is randomly assigned a free port and accessed as follows:

${{ job.services.postgres.ports[5432] }}

Nevertheless, it can be assigned in a fixed way:

ports:
- 5432:5432

Here, we have the port 5432 of the service related to the port 5432 of the machine defined in the action.

The following workflow is implemented:

name: Test Workflow

on: push

jobs:
 tests:
   runs-on: ubuntu-latest

   services:
    image: postgres
    env:
    - POSTGRES_USER: postgres
    - POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres
    - POSTGRES_BD: postgres
    ports:
    - 5432:5432
    options: --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5

   steps:
   - uses: actions/checkout@v1
   - name: Set up Python 3.5.7
   - uses: actions/setup-python@v1
     with:
      python-version: 3.5.7
   - name: Install dependencies
     run: pip install -r requirements.txt
   - name: Run tests
     run: python manage.py test

In our example, we still need to override the service values in the Django settings.py for the connection to the PostgreSQL database.

Then the trick is done, just push some code and hope it works. 😉