Spring Python

SpringOne Europe – Wish I Could Be There

Filed under: springone — gregturn @ 7:13 am

Well, I was able to make it to the SpringOne Americas conference back in December 2008. And I knew I would hunger to be at the SpringOne Europe conference this year. This time, though, since I got into twitter, I have been able to keep my thumb on the pulse by watching twitter on the #springone channel.

It makes me feel almost like I’m there.

• So far, I have been tracking Ben Alex’s Spring ROO framework.
• Oracle = “A tax on old Java technology” – Rod Johnson (overheard on twitter)
• SpringSource Tool Suite will be free for all developers.

Okay, I’m not going to give you everything (and I don’t KNOW everything). If you can make it to a SpringOne conference, trust me…it’s awesome. However, if not, then at least follow along twitter for some of the bits.

Missed SpringOne Americas conference?

Filed under: springone — gregturn @ 4:00 am

Intro_to_Spring_Python_Turnquist

In case you missed my presentation Introduction to Spring Python, here is the slide show I presented.

SpringOne – Day 4 and my presentation

Filed under: spring extensions, springone — gregturn @ 3:14 pm

Day 4
===========================================
Alright! This was great. I had about 10 people show up for my presentation, and I feel like things went smoothly. I also got a kick out of helping Russ with his presentation on Spring Extensions. I also attended Mark Pollack’s two presentations about .NET, just so I could get a feel for other people presenting non-Java technology at a Java conference.

There were good questions during my presentation, and that makes me feel the people were really interested. I polled the group, and they all use java. I think about half indicated they were using python in one form or another.

Things have been great. This is one well run conference, for sure. But, alas, I am worn out from conference fatigue. I am about ready to collapse. Luckily, I’m not checking out until tomorrow.

SpringOne – Day 3 and Spring Python plugins

Filed under: plugins, spring extensions, springone — gregturn @ 6:36 am

Day 3 – Writing a Spring Python plugin manager
===================================================
Yesterday, I visited three sessions: RESTful Web Applications with Spring 3.0, Terracotta, and The Dojo Toolkit. I admit that my mind was wandering during the web-based ones. That was because I wanted to work on my command-line, plug-in based tool. So I planted myself in the back of the room for the first and third presentation, plugged into some power, and worked on a plugin.

I managed to get a basic one completed called gen-cherrypy-app. Right now, you can only find it on one of my sandbox branches at https://src.springframework.org/svn/se-springpython-py/sandbox/gregturnquist/sespringpythonpy-83/src/plugins/. In that directory is a command line python tool called coily. If you need help, type:

./coily –help

Currently, it will load plugins found in the current directory. In this case, you can see two in subversion: gen-cherrypy-app as I mentioned before, and noop as a test plugin that takes no arguments. In the future, it would be useful to have official plugins living on SpringSource’s download site, perhaps split into officially supported ones, and others going through the Spring Extensions life cycle.

Back to coily. If you run:

./coily –install-plugin gen-cherrypy-app

…it creates a .springpython folder in your home directory, copies the entire directory of gen-cherrypy-app there, and then next time you run coily –help, it will list it as a viable command-line option.

What does this plugin do? The idea for this plugin was inspired by Graeme’s presentation on Grails where he built a twitter-like site in 40 minutes.

./coily –gen-cherrypy-app twitter

That will generate a directory called twitter, which contains a Spring Python-based CherrypPy skeleton app called twitter.py plus some support files. Several toolsets are proving the value of auto-skeleton apps: RoR, Grails, and Turbogears to name a few. Spring Python can use that too.

Spring Python hasn’t yet made it safe for the fairies, so I think users deserve all the help they can get wiring up spring python security.

But more than anything, this helps set the stage for other useful plugins that the community can identify as useful for adoption of Spring Python. I hope I have whetted your appetite. Now…time to get ready for a couple of presentations!

SpringOne – Days 1 and 2

Filed under: grails, plugins, spring integration, spring security, springone — gregturn @ 6:38 am

I finally found some time to post updates. Whew! It has been busy!

Day 1
================================
On Monday, I hooked up with the SpringSource guys. It seems everyone had something to work on. I wanted to get 0.9.0 completed and working before giving my demo of PetClinic on Thursday. Just about anyone I spoke to was polishing up their slides. It is truly fantastic to be chatting with the guys at SpringSource.

Rod Johnson gave the keynote addresss, focusing on the target goal of SpringSource in reducing the complexity of application development. Complexity means more development, more risk, and in turn, more cost. SpringSource’s overarching goal of reducing complexity must be working, because he had several metrics showing how much has been adopted in some degree by the industry.

After the keynote, I was finally able to meet up with Keith Donald. We have been playing email tag for some time, and I was surprised to find out his office is probably 10 minutes away from mine. Hopefully we can get together soon after the conference. It was also great to meet Mark Pollack, Chris Beams, Ben Alex, and of course, Rod Johnson himself. While I enjoy reading their blog entries and source code, there is no substitute for meeting the real person.

Day 2
================================
In the morning, I attended the Grail presentation. That was awesome. Graeme demonstrated building a twitter-like site using Grails in 40 minutes. Okay, he promised 40 minutes, and took 45 minutes, but only because he started adding extra functionality not found at the actual twitter site. In the process, I was realizing the value Grails places on plugins. Grails is good at creating a skeleton application, and then letting you flesh it out. I was starting to get the idea that Spring Python could use a command line utility with plugins to generate a skeleton CherryPy app, Django app, or anything else developed by a plugin. Well, I went to the next session, “Intro to Spring Security 2.5″, opened my laptop, and started coding. I managed to write a static skeleton app, and then began working on a command-line utility to dynamically generate this. That is still in progress.

I admit I was only listening with one ear to Ben’s presentation. Sorry Ben! 1) I am already somewhat familiar with Spring Security, 2) most of it is geared towards web apps which I don’t write, and 3) I was really stoked at the idea of a command-line tool that download Spring Python plugins from a network location. I did catch his question, “who here is NOT writing web apps?” I was the only person in the room who raised a hand to that. When asked what I was using, I answered “Swing desktop apps.” That plugged Ben’s point that Spring Security uses the same tactics.

After lunch, I attend two sessions about Spring Integration. This is channel based messaging, which is sort of like JMS on steroids in my book. They interface with JMS, but also with other things like file-based systems, web services, RMI, anything. And it is easy to plug in your non-message based service to a chain of processing. This is wiring your app in a different, more decoupled way. I sure could have used this about five years ago.

Later that evening, Russ and I got together to work on his Spring Extensions presentation. Russ is planning to talk about the process Spring has set up to better manage new code, and wanted to compare the process with real life, and Spring Python is his choice target. If you are at SpringOne and can read this before Thursday, I highly suggest you attend that presentation. It will definitely be entertaining (shameless plug).