JeffCroft.com: LOST-theories.com

001 // gravesit // 06.06.2006 // 10:59 PM

Have you crossed over to superFAN?

002 // Adam Spooner // 06.06.2006 // 11:16 PM

Jeff,

Kudos on the LOST site…finally something out there to house the thousands of theories floating about the web.

Thanks a ton for dropping that source code for us hungry Django poppets in search of real world examples. I’ve wanted to take a serious step in the way of Django for some time, but with all the hype over Rails…and the books being pushed on us like chocolate cake on a fat kid, it’s been hard to not just jump on the Rails train.

Hopefully this will be the inspiration I need to start making some Django[od] points [say dang good points]!

Cheers!

003 // Keith // 06.06.2006 // 11:34 PM

Cool stuff. VERY helpful to see how it’s all put together. Thanks a ton Jeff!

Oh, and very nice work on the site. I’m sure once Lost is back it’ll go CRAZY.

004 // Justin // 06.07.2006 // 12:27 AM

Wow man, that’s really cool for an obsessive fan site ;)

Thumbs up for releasing the entire source.

005 // Tony // 06.07.2006 // 12:38 AM

Cool. Linking to it from my Lost wiki right now.

006 // Joshua Brewer // 06.07.2006 // 1:45 AM

Alright! This is what I have been waiting for. I have been playing for a bit in my local environ, but really wishing I had something that I could tear into and digest.

Thank you. And the LOST site is outstanding. Good to know there are others out there as hooked as I am…

007 // Jamie Fehr // 06.07.2006 // 2:06 AM

I made the mistake of watching the First episode and now my life is revolved around a television program. I definitely plan on spending some time on your site and thanks for the source code to take a gander at.

008 // Uninen // 06.07.2006 // 3:27 AM

I think this is worth Digging: http://digg.com/links/LOST-theories.com_-_all_about_LOST_speculation

Great work, Jeff! Again :)

009 // John D'Agostino // 06.07.2006 // 4:07 AM

Nice work Jeff, the only suggestion i would make is that you separate the url.py file into app specific url files to make it a little more readable. Other then that, we will make a programmer of you if you keep this up. :-P

010 // gb // 06.07.2006 // 5:22 AM

Jeff, thanks for posting the code. It’s great to see how a complete, functional site is put together.

And I really like the CSS styling…

011 // AJP // 06.07.2006 // 7:30 AM

Way to go Jeff! This is exactly what those lost fan sites should be. Great jorb, and of course it looks fantastic too. I’ll probably get lost (ha ha) in the site this fall, but it’ll be fun to revisit it over the summer to stay current.

The only thing I’d say is a play by play of the episode instead of Wikipedia’s vague descriptions, but that’s just a small complaint.

Good work.

012 // David ZÃ¼lke // 06.07.2006 // 7:35 AM

Totally awesome, Jeff. This site is really, really, really in a class of it’s own. Great job. I posted a theory already, plus a review on my blog.

013 // Tony // 06.07.2006 // 7:39 AM

@AJP, There are lots of Lost-specific wikis out there that do a more indepth summary of episodes. Google can tell you all about it.

014 // Kevin Tamura // 06.07.2006 // 9:34 AM

Hmm’¦ looks like I’m really goign to need to start looking at Django more.

Great job on the Lost site. I know I could and probably will, spend hours there reading all the theories. It’s nice to have them all in one place.

015 // Rich Leland // 06.07.2006 // 10:01 AM

Jeff - I sent a link to the LOST-theories to my wife (a LOST theory board junkie), and I’m sure she’s probably flipping out about the awesome-ness of it!

thanks for the code too - helps out this Django noob!

016 // Eric Litman // 06.07.2006 // 5:45 PM

Nice release, and a great excuse to explore Django.

Would you mind sharing the DB schema for this app?

Thanks.

017 // Eric Litman // 06.07.2006 // 5:56 PM

Mea culpa. I hadn’t realized that Django apps automatically generate their schemas on installation.

For those installing this and Django for the first time, you’ll need to run ‘python manage.py syncdb’ in the project directory once you’ve installed Django and its prerequisites.

018 // Ian Holsman // 06.07.2006 // 6:01 PM

I’m glad you made use of zyons.. your site really looks great!

019 // Brad // 06.07.2006 // 11:14 PM

Right on! I love it when top-notch designers/developers take on personal projects like this. It shows what can be done when zero corporate limits apply. This along with Cork’d are enough to inspire the world of web geeks over.

This is one of the most functional sites I’ve seen in a while. Everything does exactly what I’d expect it to… Which is a good thing. Definitely something to be proud of. Great site for a great show.

Great work, Jeff.

020 // sandro // 06.07.2006 // 11:41 PM

“If not, I wasted eight bucks on a domain and eight or ten hours of my life”

/me is so jealous.

Congrats Jeff, you always impress me.

021 // Simon Willison // 06.08.2006 // 2:26 AM

Really nice piece of work. I have one suggestion:how about adding external links as a first-class concept? “Enter URLs that may have inspired the creation of this theory”. At the moment you can enter them with Markdown but it seems like they deserve to be properly fielded in the database.

022 // Rob Hudson // 06.09.2006 // 6:12 PM

I notice in your templates you have: {% load markup %}

I know what it is, but where do we find it if we’d like to use something similar in our Django apps? Is there any setup involved?

And thanks for sharing the code — it’s a great resource to learn by example.

Thanks, Rob

023 // Jeff Croft // 06.10.2006 // 3:42 AM

Rob-

The markup filter (which provides markdown, textile, and restructured text) is built into Django.

024 // Johan // 06.11.2006 // 10:50 AM

I like this design a lot - easy on the eyes. Though I am no fan of TV series. Good job.

025 // Rob // 06.12.2006 // 12:29 AM

Thanks Jeff, I did end up finding it in the django contrib area. Looking at the code under contrib/markup/templatetags I see some docs that explains what libraries you need installed on the server for those filters to work.

And Google told me what “smartypants” is. :)

Thanks.

026 // Alex Aguilar // 06.13.2006 // 1:38 PM

what text/code editor do you guys use?

I assume TextMate on OS X but what about for Windows?

027 // Jeff Croft // 06.13.2006 // 1:44 PM

TextMate is the only text editor I ever use.

028 // Hans // 06.13.2006 // 6:49 PM

Thank you so much for that link.
I love the simple, yet beautiful, design of LOST-theories.com.
I really love the subtle Dharma Project logo in the header.
Long live TextMate!

029 // Shane Shepherd // 06.14.2006 // 8:23 AM

@Alex - I like Notepad++ on Windows…and it’s freeware!

030 // Scott McCracken // 06.25.2006 // 11:02 PM

Jeff -

If you have a moment, I was wondering if you could shed some light on how you were able to store all your models and applications within a folder named ‘project’ within your site folder?

By following the instructions of the official django tutorials, I end up creating a project called ‘mysite’ and an application called ‘polls’. All the files end up in the ‘mysite’ directory, when ideally I’d like to have them setup in the ‘mysite/project/’ directory like you have lost-theories setup.

So I used Finder (OS X) to create a ‘mysite’ folder and then from within that directory I run ‘django-admin.py startproject project’ - this creates the directory structure I desire.

The problem is when I add the string ‘mysite.polls’ to my INSTALLED_APPS under settings.py, I get an error saying the ‘mysite’ module doesn’t exist. This is because it is now looking for ‘project.polls’ … which makes sense.

I noticed your settings.py has applications setup such as ‘losttheories.blog’ in your INSTALLED_APPS, but you still have a ‘project’ sub-directory under your ‘lost-theories’ folder … is that easy to setup? Many thanks in advance!

031 // Mark // 07.16.2006 // 2:41 PM

Mr. Croft, in your /project directory, there are a number of apps. The ‘/lost_episodes’ app appears to be a series of basic models containing what might be best described as meta data, information that the other apps might act on, but /project/lost_episodes isn’t an app in the basic Django sense.

Is that correct?

032 // Jeff Croft // 07.16.2006 // 3:19 PM

Mark-

I’m not sure I agree with that assessment, but the real issue is “what is an app?” I’ve kind of struggled with this in all of the Django projects I’ve built, and I’ve come to the final conclusion that it doesn’t really matter — it’s just what makes sense to me.

All the models for lost-theories.com could have easily been contained in one app. Or each model could have been its own app. Which is the “right” way? I don’t know.

lost_episodes is where I stored all of the models that were specifically about the TV show (rather than about theories relating to the TV show). Each episode has characters, locations, themes, and events that appear within it, so I included those models in lost_episodes.

This is the breakdown of the apps in lost-theories.com and the way I was looking at them:

accounts: stuff dealing with registration, passwords, etc.
blog: the blog on the site, for site updates and such
lost_episodes: anything that was specific to episodes of the TV show
theories: theories people wrote about the story of LOST, and anything related
user_details: the user’s profile information (location, avatar, IM names, etc.)

I’m not sure that’s the best way, but that’s how I did it. Like I said, in the end, it hardly matters. I think the most important thing is that it makes sense to the developer(s) working on the project.

033 // Mark // 07.16.2006 // 3:32 PM

I’m not sure I agree with my own assessment either, but I’m trying for a way to end the frustration of looking at a project and not seeing a starting point with Django. I’d like to stress that I’m certain it’s me, not Django causing the frustration.

Thanks for your reply and your ongoing crusade to educate those of us qualifying as “unwashed masses!”

034 // Jeff Croft // 07.16.2006 // 3:42 PM

Mark…

One thing I’ve done in the past is start by making only one app and doing everything within it. Especially when I’m sort of shooting in the dark and I don’t know exactly how the model design of the project is going to shake out in the long run. I’ll just do everything in one app until I’m reasonably confident that I’ve got all the models I need, and then break it out in multiple apps that make sense after that.

For what it’s worth, I asked Jacob Kaplan-Moss (one of the Django lead developers and my co-worker) about this exact thing a few days ago — how do you decide what models go in what app within a project?

He, too, said it didn’t make a lot of difference, and to just figure out what organization makes the most sense to you. One good tip, I think, is to make things that are generic their own app. So, far example, tags. On a site like my personal site here, tags can be applied to almost anything — photos, links, blog posts, etc. So, it makes sense for tags to be it’s own app. Of course, it’s not it’s own app because I didn’t understand this when I did it. But still. :)

Also, it may help to understand the context that this was all built out of — our newspaper sites at World Online. Many personal and smaller sites are just one or two apps, but our newspaper sites have lots. Here, for example, are a few “apps” and some of the models they contain from our Ellington CMS:

News: Stories, Sections, Combined sections, Static sections, Recurring inlines, Datelines
Blogs: Entries, Blogs, Collections, Quick Links
Podcasts: Shows, Episodes
Chats: Chat types, Chats, Messages

So you can see that each app definitely contains models that are related to one another. While we could have just made an Ellington app and stored everything within it, the “app” idea add a bit of organization, and those grouping end up on the admin are homepage, so it helps in UI a bit, too. Ellington currently has over 30 apps, and we often build two or three new ones per month — so you can see where the groupings start to become pretty important. :)

035 // Mark // 07.16.2006 // 7:47 PM

Mr. Croft,

Thanks very much for the thorough followup… it relieves some of the (possibly needless) stress I was generating while facing not only a new language and a new framework, but a strange design process to boot.

If it makes you feel better about the time invested in my neurosis, I’m believe that some clever person involved with djangoprojects.com should post your comments here in a somewhat official manner. I think for Django to gain traction, they… we! need to overcome the friction generated by learning something new. Providing some background for the tutorial, perhaps. I appreciate a case study approach, even though I’m fully aware of how annoying this sort of thing can be for someone who’s got the know-how to write it up.

Or it could well be it’s just me having this issue! ;)

036 // Mark // 07.19.2006 // 10:07 AM

Mr. Croft,

One last question: in user_detail.html, this tag is in the template: {{ lostuser.get_gender_display }} I can’t find any methods matching that, nor any tags under templatetags that would explain it.

Could you please shed some light on where that’s coming from?

Thanks!

037 // Mark // 07.19.2006 // 10:16 AM

Scratch that question, I found the answer:

http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/db_api/#get-foo-display

Thanks anyway ;)

038 // Jeff Croft // 07.19.2006 // 10:18 AM

Sure, Mark. get_fieldname_display outputs the display version of a field that has "choices." It's a built-in method that gets added for any field that has choices. So, in my model, I have this:

GENDER_CHOICES = (
    ('M','Male'),
    ('F','Female')
)

And this:

gender = models.CharField(maxlength=32, choices=GENDER_CHOICES, radio_admin=True, blank=True)

Say someone is a guy. In templates, {{ lostuser.get_gender }} will render "M", and {{ lostuser.get_gender_display }} with render "Male."

039 // Jon // 08.04.2006 // 3:44 AM

Hi Jeff,

Great post, it’s a promising theory to have a theory site for Lost. However my question doesn’t relate to that, I really just want to know whether the whole project really took 8 to 10 hours… truthfully. If it did I must be getting something extremely wrong in my projects.

All the best Jon

040 // Luke // 08.25.2006 // 2:09 PM

As we say in England, you are a legend! I love the Lost site, it’s a great read in the break between seasons. Thanks!

041 // Phenom // 09.12.2006 // 10:12 AM

Great work Jeff,

I noticed you have the templates hardcoded in your settings file. If you want to avoid that you could do something like in the settings file:

import os #get the path of the settings file settingsPath = os.path.dirname(os.path.join(os.getcwd(), file)) #split the path to get the dir a level up from project

splitPath = settingsPath.split(“/project/”) os.path.normpath(splitPath+”/templates/”)

This is a bit of a hack and I’m not sure how you guys would rate it. Hope its of some help though.

042 // Steven // 09.27.2006 // 2:43 PM

Hi Jeff!

I love the colours for the Lost site. It also pays to have Lucida Grande on a PC ;)

I too am not a programmer (not even PHP) but I am wanting to become more self reliant on my own skills rather than pay someone else $1,000s to craft a CMS etc.

Last night I managed to set up Python, SQLite, SVN etc and now I have a coding environment!

I have to say that Python seems quite intuitive and I’m now working my way through Guido’s tutorial guide.

PS. I wanted to install your site (Lost Theories) and load it up but I get errors when I do ‘manage.py syncdb’

I did remember to change the database from Postgres to SQLite in the settings file… Any ideas?

043 // Baxter // 09.28.2006 // 4:22 PM

What’s the error? Not like there’s a high likelihood I can help, but I’d take a swing at it if I could.

Also, the full Dive Into Python book is online. Recommended for us Newbs.

044 // Steven Hambleton // 09.28.2006 // 11:13 PM

C:djangolost-theories>django-admin.py syncdb Traceback (most recent call last): File “C:Python24Scriptsdjango-admin.py”, line 7, in ? execfile(file) File “C:django_srcdjangobindjango-admin.py”, line 5, in ? management.execute_from_command_line() File “c:django_srcdjangocoremanagement.py”, line 1307, in execute_from_com mand_line from django.utils import translation File “c:django_srcdjangoutilstranslation_init.py”, line 3, in ? if settings.USEI18N: File “c:django_srcdjangoconf_init_.py”, line 27, in getattr self._import_settings() File “c:django_srcdjangoconf_init_.py”, line 52, in importsettings raise EnvironmentError, “Environment variable %s is undefined.” % ENVIRONMEN T_VARIABLE EnvironmentError: Environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined

Does this make any sense?

045 // Jeff Croft // 09.28.2006 // 11:18 PM

Steven-

You don’t have your DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable defined in your shell. Configure that (in .bash_profile if you use bash) and you’ll be fine.

046 // Steven Hambleton // 09.29.2006 // 2:11 AM

Windows user here :(

Sorry, total noob. I read the Django docs but still can’t get it.

I’m sure I’ll understand this soon enough and you can email me a slap in the head…

047 // Steven Hambleton // 09.29.2006 // 2:53 AM

Just to let you know what I did -

unzipped the source code to my Django folder so it’s now here - c:/django/lost-theories/

I changed the databse type to SQLite3 Not sure about the MEDIA_ROOT, TEMPLATE_DIRS or ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS

set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=lost-theories.settings django-admin.py runserver

nope

I tried to do manage.py syncdb but no luck

The Django docs confuse the hell out of me as I’m not overly familiar with some of the terms.

I’m not giving up though!!

048 // Baxter // 09.29.2006 // 7:21 AM

What Jeff said.
You might want to look at Jeff’s installing on Dreamhost tutorial, or, since you’re on windows, here: http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/install/

049 // Steven Hambleton // 09.29.2006 // 8:01 AM

I can create projects and apps and all that so the environment is sound. It’s just the small details.

So what would be the steps to setting up Lost Theories on a new Django install on Windows (WAMP setup).?

050 // Robert // 10.01.2006 // 9:39 AM

Jeff,

Firstly, thanks for putting the source code into public. I’ve leant much thanks to your code.

One thing I don’t get is fetching objects related to specified object:

For example, you get episodes for specified Location using the method below:

def get_episodes(self): from losttheories.lost_episodes.models import Episode episodes = [] for episode in Episode.objects.all(): for location in episode.locations.all(): if location.id == self.id: episodes.append(episode) return episodes

Couldn’t this be done via: {% for episode in object.episode_set.all %} ….

in your location object_detail view ? (now I’ve noticed you don’t fetch episodes there.. or I am missing sth.

Can you please explain what is the purpose of this method, and why use this one instead of model.related_set.all (http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/models/many_to_one/)

Thanks, Robert

051 // Jeff Croft // 10.01.2006 // 11 AM

You’re right, Robert. At the time I wrote LOST-theories.com, I was unaware of how to traverse relationships backwards in templates. The way I did it is definitely wrong, and you shouldn’t do that. :)

052 // Martha // 10.07.2006 // 4:06 AM

Hello Jeff. I wonder if the source code given is sync with the latest LOST-theories.com.

Thanks for doing this :)

053 // Joshua Blount // 10.18.2006 // 1:40 PM

This was built on the pre-magic removal branch of Django correct? I’m experiencing some weirdness I’m finding very difficult to get through, and I think that is the reason, but I’m looking for confirmation.

Thanks again for being so supportive of the Django community Jeff. Maybe I’ll get the opportunity to buy you a drink sometime.

054 // Jeff Croft // 10.18.2006 // 2:08 PM

Josh-

No, LOST-theories.com is built on post-magic-removal Django.

055 // Eduardo Diaz // 11.10.2006 // 11:47 AM

Hi Jeff. I want to know if can I use your code for a similar site but in spanish. Thanks.

056 // Kelvin Nicholson // 02.13.2007 // 8:08 PM

Jeff, another thanks from me. I’ve been looking to fill some holes in the Django documentation, and your code appears to fit perfectly. So, Thanks!

057 // Mike Robinson // 02.25.2007 // 10:47 AM

Just a note to say how very, very useful it is that you have published complete source-code to a finished application that can be simultaneously viewed on-line.

(It doesn’t need to be said again, of course, that “Django is awesome,” and that it’s fantastic what World Online has done and continues to do.)

058 // John Teague // 05.06.2007 // 11:05 AM

I know this is an old entry, but I wanted to say thanks for your dedication and generous availability of your code. This is what open source is all about. And, oh yes, I agree that every developer/programmer has a style and method.

I always appreciate ‘suggestions’ when I expose my own code to the public, but I never appreciate being scolded for not employing some alternative code, and that kind of negative feedback is likely to provide good reason for many not to release theirs at all.

You have provided great examples here; very much appreciated!

059 // John Heasly // 06.29.2007 // 6:32 PM

Hey Jeff,

I was looking for some working Comments “Suggest for removal” code and can’t find a view that goes with the “/theories/[theory-id/flag/” form action url anywhere in the urls.py of the lost-theories site code download. Is it included?

Regards, John

060 // Jeff Croft // 06.29.2007 // 6:52 PM

Hey John: Pretty sure the built-in comments app does have a view for that, but I’ve not made use of it and I don’t really know much about it, I’m afraid. :(

061 // groovelady // 05.12.2008 // 11:16 PM

thanks for the lost-theories site—you were amazing to host it. I hope you will re-open the site, but I do understand what a great undertaking it must be! If this is goodbye, many, many thanks!

062 // Desmond // 05.16.2008 // 7:53 AM

Thanks for what you did with that site, It was amazing to check from thursday to thursday. But I have to recognize that now that it´s gone I feel a little empty. Lost is not going to be the same anymore. We going to miss the site man. Thanks again.

063 // Desmond // 05.16.2008 // 7:54 AM