Update: this document is officially obsolete — alpha is released !
Finally I released a preview: /webui-0.1-pre-alpha.ipk!
I included two information applets and a simple network configuration applet. I think it would be enough for a proof of concept. I borrowed heavily from nbd’s webif . So if it works for you, it is due to his OpenWrt expertise. If it doesn’t, it is my fault.
Both webif and webui can be installed side by side:
Finally I found time to finish it up. It is pre-alpha quality now, but shows the direction.
The only problem is a packaging. I didn’t mean OpenWrt ’s IPKG. I am talking about creating a custom build of Dojo to reduce the foot print. Dojo has a special provision for that but so far I was not able to do it getting some strange errors. I hope I’ll get some help from developers.
I’ve migrated my sites to new Django admin. It is easy to do but make sure that you followed instructions closely. Small mistakes can cost you a lot of head-scratching time. You can find the instructions at the bottom of Backwards-incompatible changes .
New refactoring has totally made sense. Meanwhile Robert Wittams & Co is working on new-admin (note the hyphen). Django’s admin is a very nice app (now it is an app!). I hope I could reuse some pieces of upcoming new-admin in my apps. If I remember correctly it was the main driving force behind branching.
DreamHost has installed Python 2.4.1. Somehow I didn’t see it before. Default python goes to Python 2.3.5. Use python2.4 instead.
I decided to post some screenshots of OpenWrt GUI running on my browser. I didn’t package it as .ipk yet. Click any thumbnail below for the full-size picture. Please bear in mind that this is the first cut without any niceties. I’ll put some niceties in, but I want to have working functionality first.
As you know I bricked my wireless router. All simple things were tried without any positive effect. Kaloz (of OpenWrt fame) has advised me to try JTAG . It’s a very simple thing: you need a computer, a proper software, and JTAG cable, which can be self-made . Obviously the last part is the crucial one.
I made a trip to my friendly neighborhood Altex store and bought all necessary parts: 4 100 Ohm resistors, male & female 14 pin IDC connectors (they didn’t have 12 pin ones, which were modified later using cutters), 25 pin male SUB-D, and 3’ 25 pin male to female cable — I figured I’ll make extremely short JTAG "cable" and attach it to short printer cable. The last item was the most expensive part: $3.99. It took me about 5 minutes to put everything together.
In his blog post Ian Maurer shares a very slick way to run unit tests with SQLite’s in-memory database. Check it out: http://itmaurer.com/blog/?p=2
Simple, elegant, practical.
Today I have good news and bad news.
The good news is tonight I was able to work on AJAX OpenWrt GUI a little bit more. It is coming together. I coded my first applet. It shows current stats, nothing fancy.
The bad news is I bricked my router apparently by running nvram show repeatedly. I suspect that nvram is corrupted beyond salvation. I have to reset it somehow. I tried simple recipies listed in OpenWrt Wiki but no luck so far. I’ll try to revive it on weekend. I have a feeling that my future lies with JTAG. Until the router is up I cannot debug OpenWrt GUI.
I was able to spend several hours this week to work on upcoming OpenWrt GUI. I use Dojo as a foundation. At this point I coded a skeleton, which works as a proof of concept. As soon as I finish putting in AJAX guts, I’ll switch to meaty functionality. Add some nice skin to it and we have our homunculus up and running.
Huh? AJAX? No, it’s not Ajax the detergent . No, I didn’t mean Ajax the pro soccer club . "Now I clearly remember that AJAX is a Trojan, and I don’t like Trojans and viruses" — clever, but no. Go see the movie about Greek heroes and the Wooden Horse. And let’s skip "Trojan" discussion altogether — I’m trying to be PG-13 rated.
Once again, let’s grab new version of TinyMCE .
I am running new Django cache code now. If you notice any problems with it (e.g., error messages), please drop me a line at once.
My email is at the bottom of the page.
For a long time I wanted to have two TinyMCE toolbars for Django Admin:
It finally happened. Spocke (the main developer of TinyMCE) helped me to figure out how to do it. I updated my article in Django Wiki with new config file, and removed my notes about space problem (new config file solves it) and flickering (new TinyMCE 2.0 RC2 works perfectly).
In my previous post I complained about annoying flickering. Well, I’ve upgraded to TinyMCE 2.0 RC2 and it doesn’t flicker anymore! Run, don’t walk, and upgrade immediatelly!
Finally I bit the bullet and decided to implement OpenWrt web-based user interface using Felix Fietkau ’s code. Well, MIPS processors used by OpenWrt units are not race horses and GUI is slow to my taste. Yes, I know that stock firmware is not faster. "Slow" is absolute category for me.
How do we combat latencies and slow network speed? Exactly. We can apply the same for OpenWrt, where "slow network speed" is replaced with "slow processor on local network". So I decided to do The Right Thing(tm) and implement it using AJAX approach. I will use Dojo .
Update: "The Simple Way" part of this tutorial is obsolete now. I am going to recreate examples using new improved RSS framework. Stay tuned!
I was asked several times to explain how I did RSS for my site. Django has RSS framework, which is not documented. Most probably I am not the right guy to explain it but I’ll try.
There are three ways to implement RSS with Django:
If you look into Django’s code, you will find several files related to RSS:
After some requests I decided to publish my code for categories. It’s very simple. It was inspired by following articles: A "category" Data Model (note: this article uses old-style model format, it doesn’t work anymore) and Relating an object to itself, many-to-one .
from django.core import meta
class Category(meta.Model):
"""
Category defines following fields:
name - simple name of category, e.g., 'C++'
full_name - full name of category, which includes names of all parents,
e.g. 'Development::C++'
parent - reference to parent category or null
description - HTML description of category, or null
Notes:
1) full_name is not editable. It is calculated automatically
by calculate_full_name() method during save phase (hook _pre_save).
2) Separator specified by get_separator() method. It can be
overridden in subclasses.
"""
name = meta.CharField(maxlength=50)
full_name = meta.CharField(maxlength=250, unique=True,
editable=False)
parent = meta.ForeignKey('self', blank=True, null=True,
related_name='child')
description = meta.TextField(blank=True, null=True,
help_text="Use raw HTML.")
class META:
verbose_name_plural = 'Categories'
module_name = verbose_name_plural.lower()
admin = meta.Admin(
list_display = ('full_name',),
search_fields = ['full_name',],
js = (
'/tiny_mce/tiny_mce.js',
'/appmedia/admin/js/textareas.js',
),
)
ordering = ('full_name',)
def __repr__(self):
return self.full_name
def _pre_save(self):
self.full_name = self.calculate_full_name()
def get_separator(self):
return '::'
# note: used in templates
def get_all_children(self):
"get list of all children of the category"
output = []
children = self.get_child_list()
for c in children:
output.append(c)
output.extend(c.get_all_children())
return output
# note: the last object of the list is the category itself
# note: used in templates
def get_all_parents(self):
"get list of all parents of the category from top level parent down"
id_list = []
object = self
while True:
id_list.append(object)
if not object.parent_id:
break
object = object.get_parent()
id_list.reverse()
return id_list
# note: used in templates
def calculate_full_name(self):
"calculate full name from parent list"
return self.get_separator().join([x.name for x in self.get_all_parents()])
# note: used in templates
def get_path(self):
"get relative path of the category"
return 'categories/%d/' % self.id
As you can see it is very simple. This model defines full_name field, which is auto-populated. I was toying with an idea to keep parent_name and produce full_name by concatenating parent_name with name. But after some trials I decided against it: it introduced a lot of complexities and runtime overhead by saving a few bytes in database. In my opinion it doesn’t worth it. This model defines some convenience methods as well. They are meant to be used in templates.
Finally we have official Django badges . Wilson Miner did a great job putting them together. I decided to use this one:
How do you like it?
If you are a fan of 80 by 15 pixels badges, don’t fret — Dave Hodder has you covered with his rendition of "Made with Django" theme. Collection of his small badges are attached to ticket #509 . Check it out too.
Today is the day of new releases: OpenWrt just released new White Russian RC3 .
BTW, contrary to popular belief, it’s not just for Linksys WRT54G . You can run it too, if you have supported hardware . I run it on Buffalo WBR2-G54 .
Wow, they move fast! Go and grab Tiny MCE 2.0RC2 .
Finally I added RSS 2.0 using Django’s facilities.
Default RSS feed is for my blog. Categories have two versions of RSS feed: exclusively for documents of the category, and documents for the category and its children. (I hope it is not news anymore: I have hierarchical categories.)