You can’t use ‘tidy’ python binding with App Engine as far as I know so use this for cleaning up your xml and html characters:


import cgi
string = str('I hate monkey & hyena characters')
cgi.escape(string)


Should print out:

I hate monkey & hyena characters

If you want to change the content type or mime type for your Google App Engine template:


self.response.headers['Content-Type'] = "application/xml"


Full example:


class MainPage(webapp.RequestHandler):
def get(self):
greetings_query = databasemodel.all()

template_values = {
'greetings': greetings_query
}
self.response.headers['Content-Type'] = "application/xml"
path = os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'templates/index.xml')
self.response.out.write(template.render(path, template_values))


Here’s a quick set up for Google App Engine’s SDK on Nginx.


server {
listen 80;
server_name yourhotdomain.com;
access_log logs/yourhotdomain.access.log;
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
}
}


If you want to change the datastore location do this:


sudo ./dev_appserver.py helloworld/
ctrl c
cp /tmp/dev_appserver.datastore /some_new_path/dev_appserver.datastore
sudo ./dev_appserver.py --datastore_path=/some_new_path/dev_appserver.datastore helloworld/


Your App Engine app should now be running on ‘yourhotdomain.com’.

If you want to run it on your local computer just change your /etc/hosts file to include ‘yourhotdomain.com’


127.0.0.1 yourhotdomain.com yourhotdomain.com


Here is a nice Google Map API PHP API, class, functions, library etc.

Great for getting geocodes.

You can send more than 500 emails per day by using Google’s recommendation of creating more than one account for sending.

• Create multiple user accounts to send mail. For example, ‘Campus Admin1′ and ‘Campus Admin2′ can each send 500 messages to reach 1000 unique recipients.
• Stagger mass communications over the course of two days. For example, send messages to 500 recipients on day one, wait for 24 hours, and send messages to another 500 recipients on day two.

One wonders how this would work in practice given the 2nd suggestion. It seems that at the moment Google Apps is only suitable for small businesses.

Proper syntax for svn import on Ubuntu.

svn import /home/myfiles/source file:///home/svn/myrepository -m “initial import”

The first directory after ‘import’ are where all your code are. file:/// is where the repository will be located.

Here is a handy tutorial.

Starting an svnserve daemon:

svnserve -d –listen-port=xxxx -r /home/svn/repository

Now test it out with a list:

svn ls svn://yy.yyy.yy.yy:xxxx
(where yy is your ip address xx is your port.)

Parsing feeds in Python is best achieved with Mark Pilgrims Universal Feed Parser.

Feedjack is a Django based Feed Aggregator.

A simple tutorial on how to obtain geo coordinates with php and the Google Maps API.

The next step is to use the Google Maps suggestions mechanism.

BigTable vs MySql – whats the difference?

Here’s an article over at high scalability which attempts to explain the difference between BigTable and MySQL.

If you’re looking for a simple tutorial on ER Entity Relationship Models check out this post.

Komodo Edit is one of my favorite editors. In this quick run down you can find out:

• How to organise App Engine projects on Komodo Edit
• Python Code Intelligence Auto-Complete
• Launch the development server

Let AB show you at his blog over here.