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Always remember to start Python Virtualenv

When learning to develop Django and Flask Python applications using virtual environment I did not know that I should activate the virtual environment before running the application. Well, more precisely, I did know the virtual env should be activated but rather I assumed it would be activated somehow auto-magically.

I was using MS Visual Studio 2015 RC and its new Python Tools which work fine by the way. One can install new Python/Flask/Django/etc modules via the IDE.

This was also the first time I was using Python virtual environment. I hadn’t previously done any Python web development. I had used Python for analytical purposes in files, command line and iPython but all of these used the ‘native’ operating system Python installation.

In MS VS 2015 RC, after Python Tools are installed, there are templates to create new Django or Flask projects, and one of the steps asks if I want to install virtual env or not.

So after a bit of search and read I realized virtual env is the way to go. Its better for many reasons to have a standalone Python environment for each new Python/Flask/Django project.

I just assumed that since I had created my new Python application with a virtual env that when I opened Visual Studio and started working on it, it would be in virtual environment by default somehow auto-magically.

But no, the virtual environment has to be activated manually each time the project is opened or before being able to interact with the project via web browser. So remember to activate your virtual env before running your Python/Flash/Django application.

What mislead me was that running the application without first activating the virtual environment can often be ok because the native operating system Python installation has the required modules, so application runs just fine.

But I ran into problems when after installing new Python modules only to see the application complaining that they weren’t available eg got error message in browser and command line from the server saying ‘no module named xxx’. This was confusing because I was thinking hey I just installed that.

So remember activating the virtual env before running the Python application is required. Now it is second nature to do this.

To activate the virtual env in Windows simply navigate to the ‘Scripts’ folder in your virtual env folder and run the ‘activate.bat’ file.

In command line enter ‘activate’ in that folder. Or you can enter the full path to the activate.bat from anywhere in command line.

You can easily see if virtual env has been started because when it is you will see ‘(env)’ at the start of the command line.

Then you can go back to your application folder with the ‘runserver.py’ (or whatever you call it) and then start the application!

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Display Django queryset results on Google Map

I wanted to be able to show locations by latitude and longitude with data from Django 1.8 website on a Google Map using the Google Maps API.

I used the accepted answer from a stackoverflow question to create a Google Map with multiple markers that had the store name with a link that would open that store’s details when clicked.

I did the following:

  • copied the stackoverflow solution javascript and html code into new Django template called fountain_map.html
  • created new Django view called fountain_map for that template
  • create new urls.py line to route the fountain_map url for new view/template

The stackoverflow answer used Google Maps javascript that had a javascript array like this:

    var locations = [
      [‘Bondi Beach’, -33.890542, 151.274856, 4],
      [‘Coogee Beach’, -33.923036, 151.259052, 5],
      [‘Cronulla Beach’, -34.028249, 151.157507, 3],
      [‘Manly Beach’, -33.80010128657071, 151.28747820854187, 2],
      [‘Maroubra Beach’, -33.950198, 151.259302, 1]
    ];

However while the example has this hard coded list of locations I wanted a dynamic list populated by queryset records from the new view.

So I created a queryset in the view that retrieved the location records:

   

map_points = Fountains.objects.filter(lat__isnull=False)

Note that I filtered to only retrieve records that had a lat value so I wasn’t sending records that couldn’t be mapped.

Since the queryset object is not immediately readable by the javascript as the location variable, it needed to be transformed into a format acceptable for the javascript.

There are a couple of options:

  • Use Django’s serialization to turn it into JSON
  • Loop through queryset object and manually build the array in correct format, this could be done in the view or in the template

I choose to do this transformation in the template. Django’s serialization has lots of documentation and lots of SO question and answer but seemed easier to do this in template for now.

So in the template i simply looped through the map_point queryset object to create the array that the var locations required.

The javascript required the square brackets as shown in example above along with quotes around the location name.

Note that the Stack Overflow answer also has a digit as the fourth item in the record but I excluded that in mine. Not sure what it was but user obviously wanted to show it in marker label or something like that.

Anyways my template loop looked like this:

      var locations = [
        {% for point in map_points %}
            {% if point.lat = None %}
            {% else %}
              {{ point.name }}’, {{ point.lat }}, {{ point.lon }}],
            {% endif %}
        {% endfor%}
        ]

You can see that I retrieved the following values for the locations array from the queryset results:

  • name (fountain name to show on marker label popup)
  • id (so that it could be used to create marker link to the Django view for that store)
  • lat
  • lon

That was all I needed to do and gave me a Google Map showing each fountain’s location with a Google red pin marker. When user clicked on marker, the fountain name would show that had link to that fountain’s detail page.

google map