Python Magazine

by Horacio Durán

E-commerce sites are easier to build than you think, especially using Plone and GetPaid. From small non-governmental organizations to independent professionals, many current Plone users would profit greatly from adding e-commerce abilities to their online presence. The task has been beyond the grasp of many otherwise competent website owners because of the complexity of the available solutions. No more: GetPaid can easily convert any Plone site into a complete e-commerce solution.

by Gloria Jacobs

Build applications that work with any relational database using SQLAlchemy. SQLAlchemy is a well designed, powerful Python Object Relational Mapper. It makes working with either Postgresql or MySql a trivial matter, and provides varying levels of control over collections of data. In this article, I write a simplified SQLAlchemy application that generates a new database and works with it in both MySql and Postgresql, interchangeably.

by Pablo Troncoso

This article explains how a compact framework based on PLY, a pure-Python lexer and parser module can be effectively used to decode binary data/streams in a single step, resulting in robust and maintainable high-level code mirroring the structure of the data and its related specification. An MPEG ID3v1.1 tag decoder is developed to illustrate the technique.

by Matt Wilson

Metaclasses have an undeserved reputation of being confusing and difficult. While they might be a little exotic, metaclasses can be used to eliminate redundant code and solve certain problems in an elegant manner.

by Doug Hellmann

It's hard to believe, but Python Magazine is already a year old!

by Mark Mruss

Slots are a contentious topic amongst Python programmers. Some programmers love slots, while others love to hate them. This article attempts to bypass that debate and introduce you to slots, highlighting both their advantages and their disadvantages.

by Richard Harding

The words "Distributed Revision Control" strike fear in many, but Bazaar supports many workflows. In this article we'll take "frightening" and put it to good use: to find a workflow that everyone in our project can learn to love working with.

by Steve Holden

Steve details some of the work that goes into putting PyCon together, and highlights ways that you can help to make the conference even better. This naturally leads to the topic of how you can help Python in other areas, and Steve encourages you to get involved.