Django: Common Errors, variables not appearing

While it's against the django mindset, I have done a few copy-pastes in my time using this framework.

Recently I've been doing some copy-pasting of some modules and found that often I was getting blank lines when retrieving variables.

The problem was that my text editor was fudging with the tab order of some of the lines-- a huge problem in python-based programs. My Meta class was tabbed forward so it was part of the method, not the class. By de-tabbing it, I was able to see my variables as expected.

Sometimes it's the small things.
If such a scenario exists, a better idea that goes along with the DRY principle would be to create one base Form class with the Meta class and have all other classes inherit it appropriately.

Django: Python Unchained

So I've been doing a lot of work with django lately (https://www.djangoproject.com/) and it has been an excellent MVC so far. Python in particular is very powerful and I've had 3+ years of experience with it, as opposed to CakePHP and Ruby on Rails (PHP/Ruby).

However, MVC's are not without their difficulties, even though they do save time and effort. Documentation has always been the #1 issue when using other people's software, and to this day there have only been a couple bits of software I've used with proper docs. Python and KDE are two big names at the top of my head.

I experienced one such django issue for which there wasn't a clear answer to what I was experiencing, and with the interests of newbies in mind, I will document some of those weird django errors in this blog.


Problem: Django is not displaying a view and gives 404 errors, doesn't report URLs that are defined in the urls.py file.

Solution: Every definition of the urlpatterns variable must include a blank string at the start of the tuple parameter you supply.

Wrong:
urlpatterns = patterns(url(r'^index/', index.index),
)

Right: 
urlpatterns = patterns('',
    url(r'^index/', index.index),
)

In hindsight, it would be a simple fix if I knew what pattern() required. I hope this helps at least one other person.

Cheers.


p.s. I *would* like to format code snippets properly, but apparently Blogger is incapable of doing so without some css/javascript tweaking. =/