Developer tutorials

• Writing a new application feature
  • General process
    • Files impacted
    • Adding a field to the database
    • Backend changes
    • Frontend changes
    • Documentation changes
  • Example feature
    • Update the model
    • Create the migration
    • Test your migration changes
    • Handle database interactions
    • Update application state
    • Add a new view
    • Backend tests
    • Update the frontend
    • Frontend tests
    • Update documentation
• Writing views in Zulip
  • What this covers
  • What is a view?
  • Modifying urls.py
  • Writing human-readable views
    • Decorators used for webpage views
    • Writing a template
  • Writing API REST endpoints
    • Request variables
    • Deciding which HTTP verb to use
    • Idempotency
    • Making changes to the database
    • Calling from the web application
    • Calling from an API client
  • Legacy endpoints used by the web client
  • Incoming webhook integrations
• Life of a request
  • A request is sent to the server, and handled by nginx
  • Static files are served directly by nginx
  • nginx routes other requests between Django and Tornado
  • Django routes the request to a view in urls.py files
  • Views serving HTML are internationalized by server path
  • API endpoints use REST
    • PUT is only for creating new things
    • OPTIONS
    • Legacy endpoints are used by the web client
    • Incoming webhook integrations may not be RESTful
  • Django calls rest_dispatch for REST endpoints, and authenticates
  • The view will authorize the user, extract request variables, and validate them
  • Results are given as JSON
• Reading list
  • General programming/IT
  • Python
  • Java/Android
  • JavaScript/ECMAScript
  • TypeScript
  • Git/version control systems (VCS)
  • Computer science/algorithms
  • Community experience
  • Competitions/camps
  • Massive open online courses (MOOC) platforms
• Screenshot and GIF software
  • Screenshot tools by platform
    • Browser
    • macOS
    • Windows
    • Linux
  • GIF tools by platform
    • Browser
    • macOS
    • Windows
    • Linux
• Shell tips
  • The prompt ($)
  • Tilde character (~)
  • Change directory (cd)
  • Running commands as root (sudo)
  • Escaping characters
  • Sequencing commands
  • Splitting commands into multiple lines
  • Arguments
  • Shebang
  • Understanding commands
  • Cheatsheet
  • Git