Sunday, September 5, 2010

Installing Django on Windows

You hear about the the power of python and his framwork Django, you want to taste the joys of web development using Python technology?

Here's a quick step by step tutorial to install python and Django on your Windows PC:

  1. Download and install Python
  2. Modify The %PATH% environment variable:
    - Windows Vista & 7  :
    Start --> Control Panel --> System and maintenance --> System --> Advanced system settings --> Environment variables --> System variables --> Path
    -Windows XP :
    Start --> Control Panel --> Performance and maintenance --> System --> Advanced --> Environment variables --> System variables --> Path

    - add C:\Python27;C:\Python27\Lib\site-packages\django\bin to the value of the variable path
  3. Download the latest release of Django download page (Django-1.2.1.tar.gz).
  4. Untar the downloaded file, (You can use a GUI-based tool such as 7-zip)
  5. Open a prompt command and change into the directory created in step 4.
  6. Run the command "python setup.py install"
    django is installed
  7. Install Mysql, the easiest way is to use WampServer2 or XAMPP
  8. Installer pymysql
    see my tutorial here
Everything is now installed! You can start having fun with django: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/

Saturday, September 4, 2010

Install MySQL 5 for Python 2.6 (and django) on Windows

I've heard a lot about python and his framework Django, But because i love php i never found the time to test python and honestly i didn't fell the need to do. untill this year (2010)  but the start was not very good. I installed puython django i did some tests. wow  thats amazing, very simple , now  i want to add mysql. I did some researches about mysql connectors i found Mysqldb but there is no binary distribution for Python 2.6 damn it!! thats the version i use.

It took me 4 days looking how to install this Mysqldb to no avail.  i found a lot of sulutions no one is working with me
I tried to build it from the source with many ways to no avail. My environment is Windows XP. MySQL 5.0. Python 2.6 (windows version).

Yesterday i received an email from a friend about another mysql connector named "pymysql" it's very easy to install it in three steps:

Step1:
Install Python setuptools (easy_install.exe) if you haven’t installed it. It is required to install pymysql.
To install setuptools
Download these two files and put them into the same directory:
Open a command prompt in this directory and type "python ez_setup.py setuptools-0.6c9-py2.6.egg"

Add the path where easy_install is installed into your environment PATH ({PYTHON_PATH}\Scripts, {PYTHON_PATH} is the path where python is installed).
Step2: 
Install pymysql, it's easy just donwload the latest version of PyMySQL-0.3-py2.6.egg, put it in a directory and open a command prompt, change to this directory. then  run "easy_install.exe PyMySQL-0.3-py2.6.egg" if it doesn't work try an absolute path of easy-install ({PYTHON_PATH}\Scripts\easy_install.exe PyMySQL-0.3-py2.6.egg)
 Step3:
Now you can test it in python just open the "IDLE(Python GUI)" and run the test below:
>>>import pymysql
>>>conn = pymysql.connect(host='localhost', port=3306, user='root', passwd=None, db='mysql')
>>>cur = conn.cursor()
>>>cur.execute("SELECT Host,User FROM user")
>>>for r in cur:
>>>   print r 
>>>cur.close()
>>>conn.close()
 
Step 4 for django: 
 
To use it with django you need one more step:
go to the django directory, exactly in this directory
{..\PythonPath}\Lib\site-packages\django\db\backends\mysql
and simply do a search and replace of MySQLdb with pymysql
in the two files "base.py" and  "introspection.py"


That's it.

 thanks to mouad for the link and to Pete for this great lib.