Sarah Abderemane's Website

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!

2025, year in review

2026-02-12T10:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it has been a while as usual! Happy new year dear reader! I hope the best for you.

My end of the 2025 year has been really tricky for me so I'm definitely late writing this post but it's never too late for anything right?

It's always when you write this kind of post that you realized how much you have accomplished, especially on things you weren't expecting to do, so many things on this field. And all the things you didn't managed to do but, new year, new possibilities!

So here we go, Sarah's year in review! ✨

TL;DR

This year was awesome, I success to do things and I wouldn't have expected to do, and I am very grateful for all the support I had this year, all the amazing friends I have, all the opportunities I had.

This year was also a year of learning and growth for me. Huge personal challenges that has pushed me to change, improve and be more confident in myself. Still a lot of work to do but I feel I'm on the right path.

My highlights for the year have been:

Be Vice President of the Django Software Foundation (DSF)
Meet the community all over the world
Organized a devroom in FOSDEM
Keynoting in few conferences
First full solo travel trip
See remote friends in real life
retake drawing and creative skills

Volunteering and community

I attended and spoke at several conferences this year, which was a great experience for me. I did that not only to share my knowledge, promote Django and the DSF but also to see the community everywhere in the world.

As a DSF representative, it was important for me to be present and accessible in the community. It was also a good way to connect with people locally and get their feedback on how the DSF can better support them and things we could improve.

I have attended and/or spoken at:

PyCon IT
FOSDEM
DjangoCon Europe
DjangoCon Africa
DjangoCongress JP (online)
PyCon Africa (online)
PyCon FR
DjangoDay India
PyLadiesCon (online)

Some others conferences I would have liked to attend but couldn't make it this year due to time or budget constraints but I was involved in some ways like EuroPython where I helped to get a community booth.

I gave my first keynote at PyCon IT, which was a huge milestone for me.

My keynoter badge for PyCon IT with some stickers

It was scary but also very rewarding. Thank you so much the organizing team for trusting me with this opportunity! My keynote was on raising awareness on accessibility.

Related to accessibility, with some friends we organized the first Inclusive Web Devroom. FOSDEM is a huge event in Europe and it was a great opportunity to bring more visibility to this important topic.

Still involved in my favorite community space, Djangonaut Space, where I helped as much as I can, and I switched to an advisor role this year due to my other commitments.

And one of my commitments was being Vice President of the DSF, which was a huge honor for me.

I tried my best to represent the community and help the DSF to achieve its mission. It's always hard to do all the things you have planned, especially as a volunteer, but I think we made some good progress this year.

I'm taking this opportunity to thank all the amazing people in the DSF board and all the volunteers who are doing an amazing job to support the community and the project. Specially, I want to thank the former DSF president, Thibaud Colas, who has been an excellent leader and teammate 💚

I hope to be able to continue to grow, improve and welcome people to the Django community and met other friends from all over the world. I will do my best to continue the DSF Member of the Month initiative, which is a great way to highlight the great people in our community and their contributions.

I'm sure there will be more to come in 2026!

Creative and personal projects

This year I realized I completely abandoned all the creative work I used to do, and I'm trying to get back into it because it's something I really enjoy and I'm a fairly creative person in general.

I retook drawing and painting, I really enjoy it, it's a good way for me to relax and express myself. I also want to try other creative things like photography, but I need to change my camera first, so if you have any recommendation, let me know!

I'm also trying to do some self-work, I think it's important to take care of yourself and work on your personal growth. I have been reading some books on this topic and it's really helpful for me. I want to keep doing this work and improve myself in many areas, I think it's important to be a better version of yourself to be able to help others too.

I hope to share some of my learnings and insights on this topic in the future, maybe in a blog post or something like that.

I'm also trying to learn new things, I have a long list of things I want to learn but I need to prioritize them.

Some of the things I want to learn in 2026 are:

Improve my drawing skills

Learn more about web accessibility

Learn more about self-care and personal growth

Travel and experiences

This year I had the chance to travel a lot for conferences and personal trips. I love so much to travel and discover new places, cultures, and meet new people. It's always a great way for me to meet friends in real life too.

I have been to:

Belgium
France
Greece
Germany
Ireland
Italy
India
Netherlands
Poland
Tanzania
United Kingdom
United States of America

Some of those trips were for conferences, some were for work or for personal reasons, but all of them were great experiences for me. I realized I have been to almost all the continents this year, which is something I didn't expect to do when I started the year.

I also had the chance to do my first full solo travel trip, which was such an achievement for me!

I went first in Berlin in Germany completely alone, which was a bit scary but also very rewarding. Funily, I choose to go when there was a festival of lights I didn't know about, so I had the chance to see the city in a different way and it was really beautiful.

Brandenburg Gate with blue lights for the Festival of lights in Berlin

Then I went to India for DjangoDay India, which was also a lovely experience. I had the chance to meet many people from the community and discover the country. I stayed more days to visit other cities, from the north to the south, and it was really amazing.

Bengaluru palace in India

I really want to go back to India, there is so much to see and discover there. It's a country where you either love it or hate it, but for me, it's a place that has a lot of charm and I really enjoy it.

Outside of Asia, I want to do more trips in Africa in the future. I discover Tanzania for the first time this year with DjangoCon Africa and it was amazing. I have written a blog post about my experience at the conference.

I really enjoyed the culture, the people, and the nature there. There are so many beautiful places to see and I want to discover more of them.

Europe is also a great place to travel, there are so many beautiful cities and countries to discover. Some pictures of my trips in Europe:

Warsaw in December with Christmas lights, Poland

Road in the center of Bologna, Italy

I have been to Americas too, but more in the north to visit family, I want to discover more of the south in the future.

The Capitol in Washington DC, USA

I also experienced some things that I didn't expect to experience, like the breakup of my very long relationship, which was a really hard experience but I think it was also a good opportunity for me to grow and learn more about myself.

One thing I learned from all those travels and experiences is that it's important to be open to new things and take time to take care of yourself, especially when you are in a new place or going through a hard time.

Lessons and insights

I've learned a lot during the 2025's year, by trying things, going out of my comfort zone and making mistakes, of course.

I tried to be more close to what I really want which means improving myself in many topics. I improved my public speaking skills by giving talks in conferences. I improved my leadership skills by being Vice President of the DSF and other volunteering roles. I still have work to do but I'm proud of the progress I made.

I keep working on my communication skills, especially in English, and I feel a bit more comfortable now. I learned to think more about myself and my needs, still a work in progress but there are improvements.

I also learned a lot by meeting people and chatting with them, I have the chance to meet many amazing people this year and I'm really grateful for that.

I know that I'm really good at connecting people to each other, which is something I really enjoy and I want to keep doing it. I also learned that it's important to take care of yourself and work on your personal growth, I think it's important to be a better version of yourself to be able to help others too.

My favorite quote for this year was "Feel the fear and do it anyway" by Susan Jeffers, which is a great reminder for me to keep trying new things and not be afraid of failure.

My quote for 2026 is "Try more things, take more risks, embrace more discomfort" by Peter McKenzie, which is a reminder for me to keep improving myself in many areas and be ok with the fact of not being comfortable.

Reminder to myself

2025 I keep trying things I wasn't comfortable with. 2026, Tim Schilling recently asked me what would be my theme for this year, I think it would be "letting go and self-love" as I want to keep improving myself in many areas.

It's a long road but I'm confident. It will not be easy but I'm not alone and it can just help me to be a better version of myself and be able to help others too.

Piece of advice to tell for this new year:

Keep trying, making mistakes is not that bad
Practice is important to be good at something
Be kind to yourself
Letting go of what doesn't serve you anymore
Focus on what matters to you
Celebrate your progress, no matter how small
Take time for self-care and reflection
Embrace change and be open to new opportunities

Do what makes you happy and fulfilled, and don't be afraid to change your path if it doesn't feel right anymore.

I hope this year will be a good one for you, and I wish you all the best for 2026!

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.

TIL: python Protocol and typing

2024-12-18T14:00:00+01:00

Hi there,

I’m still learning a lot around Python, and I discovered Protocol some months ago and I wanted to write that down to not forget.

Protocol was created in Python 3.8 with the PEP 544. There a multiple protocols in python but the one I’m talking about is a way to define structural typing. Some of you will also call that implicit interface. We can use the Protocol class from the typing module. To not confuse you even more, I will explain that with a simple image.

If we consider you as a journalist and you are writing tech articles, week notes and many type of writing; you always have things you will do for your posts despite the type of them, for example, such as:

mark it as draft
publish

To make sure you not forget those things, let’s create a template, so you don’t forget them. This template will be your protocol.

With real code it should look like something like this:

from typing import Protocol

class Publishable(Protocol):

   def publish(self):
      pass

That’s it, you can use it on any types of posts you want without inheritating them. This means that an object conforms to a protocol by implementing the required methods. Here’s an example with the publish method:

class Article:
   def __init__(self, title: str):
      self.title = title

   def publish(self) -> None:
      # do something to publish
      pass

The class Article is now implementing the protocol Publishable with the addition of the required method publish.

The pro and cons of that are:

Pro

No need of inheritance pattern, less direct links and avoid drawbacks of inheritance if you make changes
Don’t forget to implement things and have more dynamics

Cons

Less readable, you have to know that
Useful mostly for typing

I guess right now you’re thinking, great but how do I use this Protocol? Good question!

Protocols are primarily used for type hinting and static type checking. This means you can use a protocol as a type annotation to indicate that an argument or variable must conform to a specific protocol.

If we retake our example, we will have this following code:

def publish_article(article: Article) -> None:
   article.publish()
   ...

In this case it’s only one Protocol used, but you could have multiple Protocols used.

class Draft(Protocol):

   def mark_as_draft(self):
      # do something to mark as draft
      pass

class DraftAndPublishable(Draft, Publishable):
   pass

In this example, we define a protocol named Draft with a mark_as_draft method. Then we define another protocol named DraftAndPublishable that combines both the Draft and Publishable protocols.

If you are familiar with the special methods __iter__ and __next__, if you implement both, then your object will use the Iterator protocol ✨ You can learn more on Real Python blog post related to Iterator Protocol.

To conclude with, Protocols provide a way to define structural typing in Python, allowing you to create interfaces without the need for explicit inheritance. They enable type checkers to verify that objects adhere to the defined protocols, enhancing code correctness and maintainability.

That’s it for now! I hope it will be useful for someone.

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: Accessibility resources #2

2024-05-23T00:00:00+02:00

Hi there,

I decided to start a second edition of accessibility resources, I have learned many things about accessibility and I want to share these resources with you. I have made sections related on topic you might be more interested.

Courses

These courses are interesting as an introduction to accessibility and to review certain concepts if you are already familiar with accessibility notions.

Edx course: Introduction to Web Accessibility - Free course
Sara Soueidan course: Practical Accessibility - Paid course

Books

I'm a big fan of ebooks, I have all of them in that format if it's a requirement for you. I haven't read everything but it's on my todo-list if not finished. I added some links for people who wants to learn more but you can find them in other platforms.

Accessibility for everyone, Laura Kalbag - A book A Part
Maximum Accessibility: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone: Making Your Web Site More Usable for Everyone, Sharron Rush - Amazon
Practical Web Inclusion and Accessibility: A Comprehensive Guide to Access Needs, Ashley Firth - Amazon
Web Accessibility Cookbook: Creating Inclusive Experiences, Manuel Matuzovic - Amazon
Beyond Accessibility Compliance: Building the Next Generation of Inclusive Products, Sukriti Chadha - Amazon
Fixing Access Annoyances, Phil Mitchell - Amazon
Web Accessibility: Web Standards and Regulatory Compliance, Jim Thatcher, Mark Urban, Bruce Lawson, Michael R. Burks, Richard Rutter, Andrew Kirkpatrick, Christian Heilmann, Shawn Lawton Henry, Bob Regan, Cynthia D. Waddell - Amazon
Ensuring Digital Accessibility through Process and Policy, Jonathan Lazar, Daniel F. Goldstein, Anne Taylor - Amazon

Colors and contrast

There are many great accounts and resources shared via #a11y or #accessibility, worth to follow them in social medias.

That’s it for now! I hope it will be useful for someone.

TIL: Git push force with lease

2024-05-22T11:00:00+02:00

Hi there,

I'm used to rebase my PRs with a git rebase and force push, I discovered my new friend: git push --force-with-lease thanks to my coworkers.

Git rebase?

Git rebase is helpful to rewrite history of the commits in a specific branch. You have the full documentation of git push. If you are new or not fully familiar to git, I quite like this website in order to to learn git and practice at the same time. You can rewrite the history of your commits and then force push.

--force vs --force-with-lease

The difference between --force and --force-with-lease is with --force-with-lease will push only if you are not overwriting any work on the remote branch if more commits were added to the remote branch. If is not the case, the push will be cancelled and you will get an error.

--force will overwrite any work in the remote branch, no matter if there are anything new in the branch. As you can see, --force-with-lease is a safer option if you don't want to overwrite someone elses work by force pushing.

Bonus: --force-if-includes

I discovered today via Mastodon that Adam Johnson has done a post related to this before this one, worth take a look, I also learned about --force-if-includes : you can learn more on his article.

That’s it for now! I hope it will be useful for someone.

My Accessibility Review Checklist

2024-03-27T10:00:00+01:00

Hi there, some of you already know I have an interest in accessibility and contribute to open source projects in this domain. I wanted to write a checklist to remind myself of things to check when I’m reviewing a PR to avoid forgetting elements. This is from my point of view and I’m still learning a lot about accessibility. This might be useful if you want to do so too. I will also link to other checklists because many things already exist before I write this article and they are awesome.

If you have doubts for anything, you can check in the documentation:

Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)

TL;DR

Here you have the summary of the checklist to care about:

1.Test with accessibility checker tools

2.Use semantic HTML

3.Use appropriate alternative text for all images/icons

4.Ensure keyboard navigation is possible

5.Ensure color contrast meets accessibility standards

6.Check for correct usage of ARIA attributes

7.Add landmarks

8.Test with screen readers

The detailed checklist

Accessibility checker tools

Testing is the most important part. Even if you are not aware of everything in accessibility, you will know what is wrong and what you have actually done and start to improve somewhere.

You have many tools which can allow you to test your code properly and give you some hints on the rule and/or the code possible to change.

There are many ways to test a website. First we have the accessibility tool checker. You can have it via a browser extension, via the direct website or run it as an integrated tool in your project.

Don’t forget that you can also use the developer tool with some checks related to accessibility. For example, you can force theme colors to see the changes. Personally, I use the browser extension Accessibility Insights. It suits my needs most of the time and it’s a very complete tool.

To avoid reinventing the wheel, I suggest you learn more on how to start accessibility testing via the article done by a11y.coffee.

If you would like to automate some tests, this is also something possible.

“57.38% of total Issues were detected during automated tests” according to Deque, you can find more information on the website.

Pa11y is a great tool to automate your accessibility testing, you have the Pa11y CI which is built to run under continuous integration. You can find many tutorials on Pa11y on their website.

HTML markup

This is something we don’t frequently think about but this does impact the accessibility. Div and span are tags without semantic meaning and this is really important. Semantic elements are recognized by browsers but also by screen readers and other assistive technologies. I think I can’t write better about how it is important than Semantic Code. Why meaning is important from accessibiltywise.info from Edward Haynes.

For example, when describing an unordered list, instead of using this code:

<div>
   <span>Coffee</span>
   <span>Tea</span>
   <span>Water</span>
</div>

You could use these specific html elements:

<ul>
   <li>Coffee</li>
   <li>Tea</li>
   <li>Water</li>
</ul>

Alternative text

Images and icons are nice and aesthetic but it’s meaningless for people with low or no vision.

Many tools and websites integrate an alternative text to make sure people who can’t see or have difficulties seeing the image, have at least the description of the image. Most of the time it’s a small description but it’s better than nothing.

In the website, verify you have an attribute alt on each media, especially images.

For example, when adding the company photo in a page, you could do something like this:

<img
   src="/path/to/img"
   alt="Photo of the Company Staff holding a flag"
>

To use a real use case, I took a picture from my blog below, if the image is not accessible or the link is simply broken, it will lead to this result as you can see below:

Image result when there is a alternative text and an image broken

Labels

Many times, people like to skip or remove labels. Design, or whatever reason, you shouldn’t do that. Visible labels are helpful to know what this element represents. This is really meaningful when you have a form, for example. A real example is with the placeholder on credit card field:

Using placeholder without a label on the credit card field for example has the screen reader say “kisses kisses kisses kisses” (cz the placeholder is xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx) instead of “credit card number”

—Sara Soueidan, Twitter

The recording of the screen reader is available.

In this case, best would be to add a label linked to the field with the for attribute like this:

<label for="cardNumber">Card Number</label>
<input
   id="cardNumber"
   type="text"
   inputmode="numeric"
   pattern="[0-9]*"
/>

It’s possible to add a hint if needed with a span tag. People should be able to enter payment card numbers in whatever format is familiar to them. This means to be able to have additional spaces, hyphens and dashes and it’s still possible to validate the correct format of the field.

Keyboard Navigation

Navigating through a website can be hard if you don’t help readers, especially when they use only a keyboard and/or a screen reader. This is why you should use the correct HTML markup and think about the navigation. The best way is to try to navigate like someone else will do.

You will also notice the importance of the focus indicator in this type of navigation, to know which element you are currently focusing on. If you have been one day removing the outline of elements with CSS without defining a new indicator, please reconsider it after knowing this.

These are the steps to navigate in a website:

Go through your page with the tab key
Make sure every interactive element can be reached.
Make sure every interactive element can be used.
Make sure the order is logical.
Make sure the focus is visible, unobscured, and has enough contrast.
Do the same in reverse with Shift + Tab
Make sure there are no focus traps

The navigation is supposed to be logical through elements, if you see something wrong then you can see how to change. This part is easier to do when you have feedbacks or ask other folks to make sure it’s correct.

Color and contrast

Color and contrast are something which impact a lot of users: disabilities, comfort if looking by night, low vision and so on.This is important because this is the first thing we see in addition to the content. Low contrast makes things hard to distinguish and hard to read, particularly for people with low visual acuity or color blindness.

You have many ways to ensure the contrast is enough and everyone can read. You have the devtools from your browser that will help you check directly on elements that have a color and/or background.

Color contrast of a text in the sidebar with chrome devtools on djangoproject.com

You can have an extension that you can add to your browser to also check colors and contrast. For example, I personally use colorblindly for Chrome to see the difference between colors visions that could exist.

Finally, you have dedicated websites or tools that will help you to check contrast only for specific things. I really like whocanuse.com about different types of vision between a color and the background color associated.

If you want to compare two colors with a matrix, contrast-grid from eightshapes.com is my go to.

There are specific tools that help you to adapt the color in function of the image for example. You can see that in social media, for example in Instagram, the text over a background will be white or black in function of the color, to make sure it has the correct contrast.

ARIA attributes

ARIA is the abbreviation of Accessible Rich Internet Applications. This is useful to provide accessible information in addition to the HTML semantic, but this should be used only when it’s necessary.

For example, something that should be used for showing the current element: page, section... A good example is the breadcrumbs:

<nav aria-label="breadcrumbs">
   <ol>
      <li>
         <a href="/">Home</a>
      </li>
      <li>
         <a href="/blog">Blog</a>
      </li>
      <li>
         <a
            href="/blog/accessibility"
            aria-current="page"
         >
            Accessibility
         </a>
      </li>
   </ol>
</nav>

The risk with ARIA is that people think each time it’s needed to add an attribute and it’s not the case. HTML semantics can be sufficient in some cases. For example, a tag button doesn’t need to have a role, it automatically has a role button. You can find more information on ARIA roles on the MDN website.

Landmarks

Landmarks are the “sections” that structure the website: header, main, footer, nav…

This can be defined via the HTML tags, main have its own tag and this allows to define the main content of the page.

Landmarks are especially useful to structure the page but also to move from a section to another easily with screen readers.

Landmarks displayed with squares on djangoproject.com with Accessibility Insights*

One thing to not forget is for a given type of landmark is used multiple times, for example <nav> for the navigation landmark, then each occurrence needs a aria-label to tell them apart.

Screen readers

Screen readers are very useful for people who have disabilities or prefer to use them to make their life easier. Many would think it’s only for blind people but it’s not the case. Someone with dyslexia can use a screen reader when using a computer or someone who has motricity issues, even temporary for example. Screen reader will announce the content of a website via text-to-speech or on a braille display. They also propose multiple ways to interact with the website with a keyboard, it's not only reading content: fill a form, interact with the browser and so on.

There are different screen readers in function of the device or browser supported and functionalities. JAWS and NVDA are the most popular. VoiceOver is the one by default on Apple devices. Microsoft operating systems use Microsoft Narrator. Android based devices provide Talkback screen reader or VoiceView by default. For Linux and Unix systems you have Orca or SpeakUp. You should be able to have a screen reader for your device.

You just need to try to put yourself in someone else’s shoes who can’t perfectly see the website and walk through the website with the tool.

Conclusion

To summarize, this accessibility review checklist is a good way to introduce people to accessibility and review your own sites to correct errors that might force people not to use your site. This one is my own checklist but there are many nice checklists, you can give a look at the list below.

Special thanks to the reviewers of this article, who should recognize themselves. Thank you for your support 💚

-- May the future be accessible with those checklists ⭐

Other checklists

https://www.magentaa11y.com/

https://www.a11yproject.com/checklist/

https://webaim.org/standards/wcag/checklist

https://webflow.com/accessibility/checklist#start

https://dequeuniversity.com/checklists/web/

FOSDEM 2024, from my perspective

2024-02-15T10:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it’s been a while! I hadn’t time to take care of my blog these days but I have so many ideas to write about! I will start with the FOSDEM conference 🙂

It’s my first time to this conference, FOSDEM is a 2 days conference about free open source software, the conference is also free, run by volunteers, same as open source. It takes place in Brussels, Belgium this year. You can learn more on the FOSDEM website.

I have been there with the Django Accessibility Team and with some friends from the Wagtail team. It’s always more fun when you do a conference with friends!

Personally, I liked the conference, I guess there might be also the hype of the first time conference here. Compared to other conference I have been, you have many tracks (also called Devroom) so it can be hard to find your way at the beginning but you finally manage your way (or follow some people who are going to the same talk).

I have seen few accessibility talks and some I wanted to see out of curiosity. I also support my friend Sage Abdullah who was giving a talk too ❤️

The talks I have been to:

It’s also quite funny, I have done mostly conferences in full english and since I’m french, I wasn’t sure each time if I should speak french or english, and sometimes I discovered after talking in english to someone, this person was actually speaking french to someone else hahaha.

The talks I wanted to see was mostly on Sunday so I talked a lot to people in Saturday and discovering the various stands there were. It was really diverse, Mastodon, Mozilla, Postgresql, Open design collective, OpenSSL, Debian, even XMPP!

I made new friends, of course, see old friends, and see some people I know their name but never see them in real so it’s quite nice.

The thing I really like was the BoF, which mean Both of Feather, it happens most of the time after a specific talk, and it’s a good opportunity to discuss with people from a talk or just people involved in a specific track (for example python or accessibility).

BoF - Outreachy Connect: Newcomers & Old friends
BoF - Web Accessibility and ATAG

I have been to the Outreachy one and another one on accessibility. It was really interesting to talk with people, ask questions and learn some resources from other people. I would love to see happening the resource about the WCAG for backend developers we were talking about in accessibility BoF and have a dedicated track for accessibility.

As the DSF board member, the Outreachy program seems to be interesting to have for Django at some point. I also find disturbing to see so many people no knowing Django at all, I think it would be nice to have something representing Django next year. Nevertheless, we did find some people using Django or knowing Django and found amazing to see the full accessibility team at the event. We were thanks for our work on accessibility, this is so priceless to have feedback on that and we love that.

Sage represent CMS with python with his talk, and a lot of people in the room was only doing PHP, so it was nice to see the appreciation of other people of the work done in another language for quite same purpose in content management system.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to see Cheuk's talk or talk from the Python Devroom but I'm glad I saw her at least.

Some of them were totally full, especially when it's a talk given by Daniel Stenberg or Scott Chacon but I enjoyed watch them online:

I plan to be there next year, and I hope to see you there or have your support from wherever you are!

2023, year in review

2024-01-04T10:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it’s have been a while… First of all, I want to say happy new year to you, best wishes !!

I took the time to do a review of the year with the same model as I've done in 2021. I was sick for the end of the year so I didn't finish my article before the end of 2023 but, it's finished to be published today! 🎉

Disclaimer

I didn't review my article by someone else and I'm not a native English speaker, if there are mistakes, feel free to contact me and I will edit the article.

TL;DR

This year was incredible, I success to do things I can’t imagine do. I am very thankful for all the support I had this year, all the new amazing friends I have, all the opportunities I had.

My highlights for the year have been:

Helps organizing the DjangoCon Europe
All about Djangonaut Space program
Do my first talk
Change job
Make friends all over the world
Be elected for the DSF Board

Learning and improvements

I've learned a lot this year, by trying things, especially things I was really afraid of, and making mistakes of course. I think this year was a year of change for me.

I tried to be more close to what I really want. I changed job to a job where I do the technology I like the most with an impact on climate change.

I also learned by chatting with friends. I'm still not completely proud of my English level despite many people would say it's really fine but I guess it’s just a matter of being comfortable to say the correct words for the meaning I want.

I also met many people, I’m thankful they are all kind and lovely, thanks to the amazing Django community 💚 I’m very proud of the team of Djangonaut Space, we achieve something really nice and we have built a great relationship together. I realized by that I’m really good at connecting people to each other.

I hope to be able to continue to grow, improve and welcome people to the Django community and met other friends from all over the world.

Conferences

I've organized the DjangoCon Europe this year, it was a great experience for me. I wrote on this, and I’m really excited to the next edition in Vigo! I think this time I will only attend to be able to see more my friends and exchange with people, especially as I’m part of the DSF board, get feedback and build the future.

I've also attended to DjangoCon US, it was very nice but I didn’t attend so long due to timezone. I hope to be able to attend in 2024, I might have a chance to come 🤞🏽

Djangonaut Space

If someone would have told me that I would co-create this project and we will get the Malcolm Tredinnick Award for that I wouldn't trust this person hahaha.

I'm really happy for we have achieved and the team we create. Now, I consider all of them as my friends and the thing which is amazing is when we saw each other in real life, it's like we know us like we are friends since years but this is the first time we are seeing each other not in front of the computer.

We are really trying our best to make Djangonaut Space a good project. I hope this project will help a lot of Djangonauts to contribute and skyrocket their contributions 🚀

The funny thing is sometimes I think I should follow our program for myself hahaha. I really would like to improve my skills in 2024.

Professional career

Talking about improving my skills, I changed job to challenge myself and not staying in my comfort zone. This is clearly not easy and I have the impostor syndrome that's hard to get rid of, but I keep going and trying to improve and be not too hard with myself.

Despite that, I’m happy I have changed job, I have discovered a lot and still learning. I have also learned about myself with those experiences, for example, I think I’m good at help push something forward.

I’m also really thankful of all the open source work and opportunities I have been given. I know that this has an impact in the community but also in my career. There is the feeling like some people have, not doing enough - yeah I know, this can be weird as someone who already doing a lot of things - and want to do more but I’m trying to keep a good balance with volunteering and rest. If you have the same feeling, don't forget that, time for yourself is important too.

Talk and volunteering

I guess this is my best year for volunteering. I've volunteered for 2 DjangoCons, I help on Djangonaut Space organization, contribute and maintain Django code and accessibility, and organize Django Paris meetup. I wouldn't have imagined doing all this at the start of the year, but I think I have a strong appetite for doing things when nobody else wants to do them - am I weird?

Anyway, I’m really proud to have contribute to all of this work, the result is great and I’ve learned a lot with these experiences. I made new friends and enjoyed seeing old friends. I'll do my best to keep working on all these issues.

Moreover, I have given a talk for PyLadiesCon about how to create a mentorship program. If you know me, you already know that I’m really not confident talking in public, even less if it’s in English. A wise friend told me you have to practice to be more comfortable - Thank you Tim Schilling. So I’m trying even if I still find that scary hahaha. If you are thinking to do that one day, just try. Maybe you will discover you are an amazing speaker 😄

As I was saying before, I've tried many things this year, including run for the DSF board. This is something I really didn't planned to do to be honest. Many friends have helped me to consider it and why I should do it. Thank you if you helped me in my decision and/or if you have voted for this election. There were amazing candidates and I'm very honored to be one of the DSF's representative on the board of directors. I'm still figuring out how it works and how to help correctly. I'm thinking of doing blog posts on this at some point to share with you.

Friends and support

I have met so many people this year, I'm really thankful to had the opportunities to see some of them in real life during conferences or meetups. The thing I like the most in tech community is the friends that you have virtually are real friendships. I have the chance to have friends all over the world with my experiences. I had support from some of them, I also gave support to others. Have fun virtually or in real life in some place. This is really nice and I love the community for that. Thank you if you have contribute to my success or support me in my failure, I hope to have learned all the lesson to do better in 2024.

Reminder to myself

2023 I tried things I didn’t think I would have done. I have many goals in mind and big to-do list for 2024 but I'm confident, I'm sure I will not able to do everything but it's listed somewhere to make progress in it. I think this new year will be a good one and I hope the best for you if you are still reading this.

Piece of advice to tell for this new year:

Keep being organized
Keep trying, making mistakes is not that bad
Practice is important to be good at something
Something that you might think it’s stupid might be helpful for someone else
Don’t be afraid to ask
Keep your goals in mind and the rest too

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” 💚

Migration from Gatsby to Pelican

2023-04-21T18:00:00+02:00

Hi here... it's been a while, first post of 2023 yay! I have so much to talk about but I'll start with the first topic that took me a long time to write about: my blog.

I switched frameworks from Gatsby.js to Pelican.

Why migrate my blog ?

Good question, as I’m doing more and more python, it seems more logical to have a blog in python. Besides, it’s simpler to maintain since I use the language everyday. I also wanted to have fewer dependencies.

My website with Gatsby had many dependencies, you can see that with my package.json. Now compare that to the requirements.txt.

package.json dependencies vs requirements.txt dependencies

As you can see, the change is huge, it's the dependencies and dev-dependencies without displaying sub-dependencies.

I needed to move to Gatsby V3 because my project had too many dependencies which I cannot update. Some are simply old dependencies that are no longer maintained.

Otherwise, I had to upgrade my Gatsby project and I had too many dependencies conflicts since I used a starter in order to create my blog and the starter is not fully compatible with latest versions of Gatsby. I know how it can be hard to maintain a project, especially when you're alone. I could have contributed but i’m not doing enough Gatsby to do so in my opinion.

I finally decided to move to something else.

I choose to use Pelican, it’s pretty nice. There are plugins to improve your website and I used one of them to import existing content from another website. I used it to move my blog, it’s great! You have the full documentation here.

I used a custom theme, created by me, to have the style I wanted. I made it correspond to my previous blog so that people won’t notice I changed to Pelican. You can find already built-in themes or basic theme to create your own theme from. You can get some guidance ton creating your own theme in the documentation.

So I started from an existing theme and I change the following:

Review templates to correspond to what I want
Add missing pages
Change my CSS style and JavaScript

The fun part was to change the needed things from React.js to pure JS to get less dependencies and simple code because I'm missing some things in my website:

The animation on the homepage
The toggle theme for dark mode
Few JS for customisation (accessibility tweak for aria-label)

After that was done, I added some plugins to improve the website like SEO, or posts related in an article, you can find the plugins in the pelican organization.

And that’s it ! ✨

Examples

I know some of you will say, cool Sarah but are there other websites using Pelican ?

Yes, there are ! These are the people I know that use Pelican, but I imagine there are other websites:

Adam Johnson - https://adamj.eu/
Julien Palard - https://mdk.fr/
Justin Mayer, creator of Pelican - https://justinmayer.com/
Paolo Melchiorre - https://www.paulox.net/
Tom Carrick - https://carrick.eu/

Learning and improvements

This migration was not as difficult as I expected. I did it in a few days split up on my free time that I had because I didn't have much time for it, but I think I could have done it faster. Too many stuff to do, not enough time.

It was fun to create the theme for the blog and see how Pelican generates templates, it’s really nice. Besides, I added some categories and a TIL section, I need to add other articles but that’s another point. Pelican makes it easy to create categories and update/remove some stuff as you want. It’s easily customizable to fit your needs.

Having less dependencies is clearly a good point for me, less issues and better for maintaining. I guess I’m like many people who like their blog but can’t dedicate much time to it.

Pelican is really simple to use, I'm not used to writing in rst but it doesn't change much from markdown. Note that you can change the type of the articles if needed, but most documentation in open source for Python use rst so it's not a big deal for me.

I also have time to improve a bit the accessibility of my blog, clearly not completely done but I had time to make few corrections, which is cool.

I can now do draft articles, which is really cool because I ask people to read articles when they are willing to do so, since I’m not a native English speaker. So, you can’t find my blog on GitHub, sorry for that.

I recommend Pelican, I don’t have any drawbacks so far.

Next step will be to improve accessibility again and add more articles of course !

TIL: Global gitignore

2022-07-12T10:10:00+02:00

Hi there!

I found out that you can configure git to exclude files or folders globally and this is useful so that the project gitignore is based only on that and not on the operating system or editor of each team member.

Guess what, you can ignore things globally on your end and you don’t need to commit this in the gitignore of the project. I’ll tell you how!

First of all, you need to create a file in the home directory, we can call it with any name we want but just to know easily what it is, let’s call it: .gitignore_global.

touch ~/.gitignore_global

And then add in the file all the things you want to exclude:

.DS_Store
.vs_code

This is mine, I use Mac and Vs Code, but you need to match it with your operating system and your editor files.

Finally, configure git to know that the global files to exclude are in this path:

git config --global core.excludesfile ~/.gitignore_global

For windows users, it’s slightly different:

git config --global core.excludesfile``%USERPROFILE%\.gitignore_global

That’s it for now! I hope it will be useful for someone :)

TIL: Accessibility resources

2022-05-07T10:00:00+02:00

Hi there,

I decided to start TIL (Today I Learned) series !

Rodrigo, author of Mathspp blog, give me envy to do so with his TIL series, as I told him, I will do that to help me to remind me some stuff and share what I discovered to everyone who can be interested on. I’m dedicating my first TIL of a great series to him I hope.

I started to create a dark mode for Django project and I face to an interesting issue : accessibility.

This is something I’m aware of, but I discovered I have so many things to learn ! Even my website is really bad for accessibility.. but I learned some ressources very useful which deserve to be written somewhere.

Accessibility concern many cases : Tritanopia, Deuteranomaly and so on.

Whocanuse, is based on the same purpose of Caniuse but for accessibility and contrast.

It’s really useful to see the simulation of color for each type of vision and contrast with another color. It really helps me to better adjust color contrast.

Note: you can also see color contrast and ratio in devtools of Chrome :

devtools chrome contrast

You also have Kontrasto, created by Thibaud Colas, which have a deep interest in accessibility 🙂

Really nice to see a way to improve accessibility with images.

I also discovered Link Contrast Checker which is a website to see the contrast for links to be sure there are no violation for accessibility.

I find accessibility checklist which can be a good start to make you website more inclusive and see some point you missed.

As I am a big fan of pipelines, there are also tools to check accessibility with desktop extension or in continuous integration:

aXe
pa11y
…

That’s it for now! I hope it will be useful for someone.

2021, year in review

2022-01-30T10:00:00+01:00

Hi there, it’s have been a while… First of all, I want to say happy new year to you, best wishes !!

Thank you to Katherine Michel and Dawn Wages for inspiring me to do a Year in Review blog post!

TL;DR

This year wasn’t my best year but I success to do things I can’t imagine do.

My highlights for the year have been:

Attending to DjangoCon Europe and US
Do a lightning talk
Pass Hacktoberfest challenge
Make a contribution to a huge project
Discover and be part of an amazing community

Learning and improvements

I learn a lot this year, by trying things, reading, and do mistakes of course. I read the book of Adams Johnson about testing, which is really interesting. I discovered I had to change some habits and improve some projects.

I’m trying to be more involved in things which I care about or I have an interest in, for example, testing or Open Source Software.

I also learn by interacting with people, even though I still have some difficulty understanding everything in English since I am not fluent but close too!

I discovered many things in 2021, there are so many resources : newsletter, podcast, twitter accounts (yeah really), let me list some of them :

And conferences, even for past years are really interesting. I definitely recommend you to check out!

I also discovered I can inspire others, even I don’t think I did something amazing as other great people of the dev world but you can inspire even on things that don’t seem huge.

Conferences

I have attend to my first conference, DjangoCon Europe, and gave my first lighting talk ! I have wrote a post here, I hope I will have a chance to attend to the next one. And in real life, so many amazing people have told me that it’s a different experience and I really want to see that and see the people I talk to, so many times in the virtual haha.

I also attend to DjangoCon US, it was very nice but I didn’t attend so long due to hours. I wanted to help the organizers but I didn’t have time to do so. If you want to contribute to the community, this is a way to do it. Many people think, it’s all about code, but there are so many things to do besides coding for contribution.

I hope I will be able to do more meetups and exchange with people (in real life would be even better!).

Hacktoberfest as maintainer

I have done hacktoberfest for the second time, but this time I was contributor and also maintainer, thanks to Fum. This is a great experience, even I didn’t imagine how it can be exhausting. As a contributor you want things to happen quickly, but as a maintainer, it’s nice to see the engagement of people but so many things to do and some time people answer like the project is your only life, and I can tell you: this is totally NOT the case !

Despite that, I have learned so many things by reviewing: see things in another way, or dig in some subject I didn’t know much before.

Individuals contributions

I guess this is my best year for contributing to open source, I contributed to many projects. From small contributions to big ones. I contributed to a big project: Django. It was amazing, I also learned while doing it. It’s not an impressive contribution, but I hope it will be useful to everyone who uses this amazing framework! I hope to make more contributions, especially in the python ecosystem this new year.

Reminder to myself

2021 I tried things I didn’t think I would have done. If I have piece of advice to tell, it will be :

Be more organized
Try your best, if it’s not perfect, that’s fine
Contribute, help, write. Sometimes you think it’s stupid or useless, but it’s not for someone else
Exchange is gold. You can learn things from someone and the person can also learn from you

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.

First contribution to open source, hacktoberfest !

2020-11-03T09:08:00+01:00

First participation, first contribution to open source. Yeah !

Yes, I finished my first the Hacktoberfest challenge, thanks to Digital Ocean, Dev.to and Intel. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, just check Hacktoberfest details.

I always wanted to contribute to an open source project. But there always seemed to be obstacles: first thoughts:

Which project should I choose out of the ocean of possible repositories?
How can I make a good pull request for a project?
Issues usually seem to need specific understanding of how the projects develop
etc.

Yeah, I know what your are thinking: she might be crazy or maybe just I feel the same.

I think it’s normal to think whenever you use a good open source project, you want to contribute to it in the future. Open source is incredible. There are so many projects that are used by so many people.

I have so much respect for open source project maintainers because many or maybe most of our personal or professional projects would fail without them.

Hacktoberfest is one of the best way to start contributing to open source projects. Their site lists an extensive resources and provides information for contributing regardless of whether you a beginner or a seasoned developer. And if you follow the specific CONTRIBUTING.md for in the open source repository, you can’t be lost (normally).

Don’t hesitate to reach out to the maintainers or other contributors to ask questions if needed, as well as checking labels, and spending some time carefully reading issues.

If you’re a beginner you can check start by checking this link which will suggest some good things to get started with:

issuehub.io

Even if the Hacktoberfest has finished this year, now is still a great time to make your first contributions.

I contributed to 2 projects:

This was my first Hacktoberfest event and I have loved this experience. I can’t fully explain but the satisfaction that comes from contributing to something that can be useful to others feels great. It’s also time to discover other projects, by searching or through people who share their experiences and learn new things, of course.

I will continue to contribute ❤️

Unfortunately I didn’t officially complete the Hacktoberfest challenge due to an “intented behaviour” which now prohibits certain repositories from being eligible.

So just beware, if you have participated this year and your PRs are still in review, be careful, the flaw can still happen to you. Fum explain all in his blog. Regardless this is less important than having first taken the plunge into making contributions to open source projects — which is really the thing at the core of Hacktoberfest.

See you maybe next year!

Manual trigger with Github Actions

2020-01-28T22:12:00+01:00

Hi there, this blog post explains how to manually trigger builds of GitHub actions.

Why would you want to do that?

Instead of just waiting for a code change or a GitHub workflow change?

Well, for example the last time your build on master ran, maybe some of the servers used by your build were down (example: npm registry, some API you’re using for tests, etc..).

For now GitHub says that there’s no way to manually trigger a build, while this question was asked on StackOverflow and some people are even using CURL to trigger manual builds.

But I have found a better way! With my solution, once you’ll have it set up, the ⭐️ button of your GitHub repository will trigger a build every time YOU (and only you) will star the repository. You can do that as many times as you want.

Yes, it’s a VERY hacky solution but it works pretty well. ✨

How to do manual trigger

Let’s dig into it.

The ⭐️ button is used to launch the workflow if it’s possible, like this.

Update your workflow file to include:

on:
  watch:
    types: [started]

So the workflow will be executed each time you star, or unstar and star again the repo.

If we combine that by a useful advice from Samira in Stack Overflow, you can launch your workflow only if it’s the owner who trigger the action.

if: github.actor == github.event.repository.owner.login

It prevents to execute the action by others and only by maintainers for example.

Next you can add your job(s) to do and additional services.

At the end, we have the following workflow…

name: Test

on:
  watch:
    types: [started]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    if: github.actor == github.event.repository.owner.login

    steps:
       - name: Checkout repository
         uses: actions/checkout@v2
        #  add more ...

It’s a starter, so you can adapt it for an existing workflow or start a new one with this.

Few notes

There is the possibility to combine two events.

For example you can set your workflow with the watch event and on each push, to have the both ways.

name: Test

on:
  push:
    branches:
      - master
  watch:
    types: [started]

Here it run the process for each push on master branch and on star of the repo.

Don’t forget that if you want to re-run a workflow which have failed, you can re-run all the checks with a UI button set for a failed workflow just like that…

Screenshot of the actions tab on GitHub

It depends on what you really want to do.

Moreover, you can launch the full workflow with the watch event or only some particular steps if you add a conditional if on a step like this:

name: Test

on:
  watch:
    types: [started]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
       - name: Checkout repository
         uses: actions/checkout@v2
       - name: Step 2
         if: github.actor == github.event.repository.owner.login

In this case, it will run step 2 only if the repo is starred by the owner.

Don’t forget that the ⭐️ button launch the workflow from the default branch (master) only.

Notice that there is permissions to avoid actions in the repository or to avoid the third party to run your actions in the settings of the repo.

Screenshot of the actions permissions in the settings

Update: Suggested by Emilien Escalle in comments on dev.to, we can also configure the workflow only for collaborators by creating another job which will be needed to check if it’s a collaborator of the project or the workflow will fail.

jobs:
  authorize:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

    steps:
    - uses: octokit/request-action@v2.0.0
      with:
        route: GET /repos/:repository/collaborators/${{ github.actor }}
        repository: ${{ github.repository }}
      env:
        GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }}

  build:
    needs: [authorize]

    runs-on: ubuntu-latest

   steps:
     - ...

Good to know…

GitHub just released their action APIs which should allow soon either GitHub or browser extensions to add “trigger workflow” buttons on their UI.

I hope you liked this post and special thanks to Vincent who pushed me to write it :)

Relation between middle/senior and junior dev

2020-01-01T22:12:00+01:00

I’ve been a teacher and also a learner, so I’ve got something to tell you.

I’ve heard so many comments like “you’re too junior”, “you’re not a middle/senior dev”. I’m sure you’ve heard that too.

If you told me that something is impossible, I’m the type of woman that will try to succeed even if there is only a small chance.

Yes, I tried to achieve a proficiency level in tech close to the level of developers who inspired me despite my limited experience.

The fact is, some people believe that a junior should listen to the middle/senior dev and that’s all.

The middle/senior dev is highly qualified and has experience. For sure.

But it’s still an exchange.

Sharing knowledge is not easy for everyone. And when you’re in this situation, you sometimes have the obligation to explain complexity with simple words and distill abstract ideas into more digestible ones.

It’s an art not a science, really.

We all know that a developer is always learning, even by asking other devs. Sometimes developers ask things you didn’t think about, or you just don’t know about, and you also want to know the answer. So sometimes their question prompts you to research more and helps expand your knowledge base.

To you the junior dev

Don’t think the dev with high skills has no time for you. If he/she is really busy, add a meeting in his/her calendar. That will show it’s important for you and you really need this point. It can be the time to clarify what’s good in your work and what needs to be improved.

Try to find the answer before asking but don’t dedicate too much time to it. If you’re stuck ask for help. You’re losing time, even if it seems important to do it on your own and get the glory, you could have done so much more. And when it’s solved in two seconds, it’s much better not to wait so much time to ask help 😉

To you the middle/senior dev

Some people admire you in secret, I mean really. Take time to help junior dev to grow if you have the capacity to do so. It’s also time for you to challenge yourself and get to know your team better as well.

From my perspective a great middle/senior dev is not just someone who is technically proficient but also is someone who can help others to grow. An experienced dev should constantly learn to teach others with more clarity, to better organize their team, and to communicate more effectively.

And you, what do you think?

Docker services in Github Actions won't have secrets for you

2019-11-17T22:12:00+01:00

I explain deeper how is structured an action and how to use docker services in an article but I will focus here more on services.

Yeah, the great fact is you can use Docker containers as services in Github Actions. 🎉

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

Example made by Chris Patterson and Mike Coutermarsh for PostgreSQL. You can find the full example with node just here.

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.

Full example

For example we want to do an action which launch tests of our Django application on each push event.

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

Here the job tests consist of:

install Python 3.5.7 on the Ubuntu environment
install the dependencies
start the tests with the Postgres database

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

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
       'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
       'NAME': 'postgres',
       'USER': 'postgres',
       'HOST': 'localhost',
       'PORT': 5432,
    }
}

If you have multiple settings for database, you can do with env variable os.environ.get('HOST_NAME') or a conditional settings with if os.environ.get('GITHUB_WORKFLOW') for example.

Few notes

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).

options: --health-cmd pg_isready --health-interval 10s --health-timeout 5s --health-retries 5

This one is for postgres but you can find multiple such as elasticsearch, mysql and so on… 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…

To link the service with the job of the workflow, the host is needed. In case you’re running your workflow:

in the virtual machine, it will be localhost
in a container, it will be the name of the service

Don’t forget, you can use Docker services only with a Linux distribution.

According to the port, to access it on your job(s), it will be like that:

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

In the first example, the machine port 5432 is randomly assigned a free port and accessed.

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.

Here you go, you’re ready to use services in your workflow ! 💪

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

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. 😉