Simon Willison: TIL

Things I've learned, collected in simonw/til. You may also enjoy my blog.

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Recently added: Using Fabric with an SSH public key, Loading lit from Skypack, Publishing to a public Google Cloud bucket with gsutil, Configuring auto-update for an Electron app, Cumulative total over time in SQL

python

• Using Fabric with an SSH public key - 2021-10-06
• Find local variables in the traceback for an exception - 2021-08-09
• Check spelling using codespell - 2021-08-03
• Tracing every executed Python statement - 2021-03-21
• Using io.BufferedReader to peek against a non-peekable stream - 2021-02-15
• Handling CSV files with wide columns in Python - 2021-02-15
• Packaging a Python app as a standalone binary with PyInstaller - 2021-01-04
• Relinquishing control in Python asyncio - 2020-12-29
• Controlling the style of dumped YAML using PyYAML - 2020-12-07
• Running Python code in a subprocess with a time limit - 2020-12-06
• Decorators with optional arguments - 2020-10-28
• Explicit file encodings using click.File - 2020-10-16
• Understanding option names in Click - 2020-09-22
• Debugging a Click application using pdb - 2020-09-03
• Outputting JSON with reduced floating point precision - 2020-08-21
• How to call pip programatically from Python - 2020-08-11
• Password hashing in Python with pbkdf2 - 2020-07-13
• Introspecting Python function parameters - 2020-05-27
• Build the official Python documentation locally - 2020-05-08
• Use setup.py to install platform-specific dependencies - 2020-05-05
• Installing and upgrading Datasette plugins with pipx - 2020-05-04
• Generated a summary of nested JSON data - 2020-04-28
• macOS Catalina sort-of includes Python 3 - 2020-04-21
• Convert a datetime object to UTC without using pytz - 2020-04-19

javascript

• Loading lit from Skypack - 2021-09-21
• Preventing double form submissions with JavaScript - 2021-07-08
• Scroll page to form if there are errors - 2021-05-08
• Using Jest without a package.json - 2020-12-30
• Dropdown menu with details summary - 2020-10-31
• Writing JavaScript that responds to media queries - 2020-10-21
• Manipulating query strings with URLSearchParams - 2020-10-04
• Minifying JavaScript with npx uglify-js - 2020-08-30
• Dynamically loading multiple assets with a callback - 2020-08-21
• Working around the size limit for nodeValue in the DOM - 2020-08-21
• Implementing a "copy to clipboard" button - 2020-07-23

googlecloud

• Publishing to a public Google Cloud bucket with gsutil - 2021-09-20

electron

• Configuring auto-update for an Electron app - 2021-09-13
• Bundling Python inside an Electron app - 2021-09-08
• Signing and notarizing an Electron app for distribution using GitHub Actions - 2021-09-08
• Open external links in an Electron app using the system browser - 2021-09-02
• Using the Chrome DevTools console as a REPL for an Electron app - 2021-08-31

sql

• Cumulative total over time in SQL - 2021-09-13
• Building a Markdown summary of Django group permissions - 2021-06-03
• Finding duplicate records by matching name and nearby distance - 2021-05-19

github-actions

• Attaching a generated file to a GitHub release using Actions - 2021-09-07
• Installing different PostgreSQL server versions in GitHub Actions - 2021-07-05
• Running tests against PostgreSQL in a service container - 2021-02-23
• Using Prettier to check JavaScript code style in GitHub Actions - 2020-12-31
• Talking to a PostgreSQL service container from inside a Docker container - 2020-09-18
• Open a debugging shell in GitHub Actions with tmate - 2020-09-14
• Skipping a GitHub Actions step without failing - 2020-08-22
• Using grep to write tests in CI - 2020-08-19
• Updating a Markdown table of contents with a GitHub Action - 2020-07-22
• Running different steps on a schedule - 2020-04-20
• Commit a file if it changed - 2020-04-19
• Set environment variables for all steps in a GitHub Action - 2020-04-19
• Dump out all GitHub Actions context - 2020-04-19
• Only run GitHub Action on push to master / main - 2020-04-19

purpleair

• Calculating the AQI based on the Purple Air API for a sensor - 2021-08-31

datasette

• Searching all columns of a table in Datasette - 2021-08-23
• Running Datasette on Replit - 2021-05-02
• Querying for GitHub issues open for less than 60 seconds - 2021-03-12
• Serving MBTiles with datasette-media - 2021-02-03
• Redirects for Datasette - 2020-11-25

observable-plot

• Histogram with tooltips in Observable Plot - 2021-08-21

sqlite

• Track timestamped changes to a SQLite table using triggers - 2021-08-19
• Building a specific version of SQLite with pysqlite on macOS/Linux - 2021-08-14
• SQLite aggregate filter clauses - 2021-08-04
• Importing CSV data into SQLite with .import - 2021-07-13
• Using pysqlite3 on macOS - 2021-07-10
• Querying for items stored in UTC that were created on a Thursday in PST - 2021-03-12
• Splitting on commas in SQLite - 2021-02-01
• Fixing broken text encodings with sqlite-transform and ftfy - 2021-01-18
• Identifying column combination patterns in a SQLite table - 2021-01-12
• Replicating SQLite with rqlite - 2020-12-28
• Figuring out if a text value in SQLite is a valid integer or float - 2020-09-27
• Compiling the SQLite spellfix.c module on macOS - 2020-09-19
• Enabling WAL mode for SQLite database files - 2020-08-09
• SQLite BLOB literals - 2020-07-29
• Using LD_PRELOAD to run any version of SQLite with Python - 2020-06-17
• List all columns in a SQLite database - 2020-05-06
• Compile a new sqlite3 binary on Ubuntu - 2020-04-30
• Null case comparisons in SQLite - 2020-04-21
• Lag window function in SQLite - 2020-04-19

sphinx

• Adding Sphinx autodoc to a project, and configuring Read The Docs to build it - 2021-08-10
• Using sphinx.ext.extlinks for issue links - 2021-02-17

cloudrun

• Tailing Google Cloud Run request logs and importing them into SQLite - 2021-08-09
• Increasing the time limit for a Google Cloud Scheduler task - 2021-07-08
• Switching between gcloud accounts - 2021-05-18
• Listing files uploaded to Cloud Build - 2021-04-14
• Using the gcloud run services list command - 2020-09-01
• How to deploy a folder with a Dockerfile to Cloud Run - 2020-08-04
• Use labels on Cloud Run services for a billing breakdown - 2020-04-21

imagemagick

• Compressing an animated GIF with gifsicle or ImageMagick mogrify - 2021-08-05
• Set a GIF to loop using ImageMagick - 2021-08-03

vscode

• Search and replace with regular expressions in VS Code - 2021-08-02
• Language-specific indentation settings in VS Code - 2021-04-04

jq

• Extracting objects recursively with jq - 2021-07-24
• Turning an array of arrays into objects with jq - 2021-05-25
• Converting no-decimal-point latitudes and longitudes using jq - 2021-03-11
• Flattening nested JSON objects with jq - 2021-03-11
• Loading radio.garden into SQLite using jq - 2021-02-17
• Converting Airtable JSON for use with sqlite-utils using jq - 2020-08-28

tesseract

• Using the tesseract CLI tool - 2021-07-18

nginx

• Using nginx to proxy to a Unix domain socket - 2021-07-10

reddit

• Scraping Reddit via their JSON API - 2021-06-21

vim

• Mouse support in vim - 2021-06-19

homebrew

• Running a MySQL server using Homebrew - 2021-06-11
• Upgrading Python Homebrew packages using pip - 2020-10-14
• Browsing your local git checkout of homebrew-core - 2020-08-27
• Packaging a Python CLI tool for Homebrew - 2020-08-11

amplitude

• Exporting Amplitude events to SQLite - 2021-06-06

bash

• Finding CSV files that start with a BOM using ripgrep - 2021-05-28
• Skipping CSV rows with odd numbers of quotes using ripgrep - 2020-12-11
• Escaping a SQL query to use with curl and Datasette - 2020-12-08
• Escaping strings in Bash using !:q - 2020-10-01
• Looping over comma-separated values in Bash - 2020-09-01

macos

• Running Docker on an M1 Mac - 2021-05-25
• Shrinking PNG files with pngquant and oxipng - 2021-02-07
• Finding the largest SQLite files on a Mac - 2020-08-19
• Fixing "compinit: insecure directories" error - 2020-04-26
• Close terminal window on Ctrl+D for macOS - 2020-04-21
• Get Skitch working on Catalina - 2020-04-21
• Running pip install -e .[test] in zsh on macOS Catalina - 2020-04-21

docker

• Docker Compose for Django development - 2021-05-24
• Installing packages from Debian unstable in a Docker image based on stable - 2021-03-22
• Running gdb against a Python process in a running Docker container - 2021-03-21
• Attaching a bash shell to a running Docker container - 2020-08-10

django

• Django data migration using a PostgreSQL CTE - 2021-05-17
• Enabling a gin index for faster LIKE queries - 2021-05-16
• migrations.RunSQL.noop for reversible SQL migrations - 2021-05-02
• Django Admin action for exporting selected rows as CSV - 2021-04-25
• Filter by comma-separated values in the Django admin - 2021-04-21
• Usable horizontal scrollbars in the Django admin for mouse users - 2021-04-20
• Enabling the fuzzystrmatch extension in PostgreSQL with a Django migration - 2021-04-18
• Efficient bulk deletions in Django - 2021-04-09
• How to almost get facet counts in the Django admin - 2021-03-11
• Pretty-printing all read-only JSON in the Django admin - 2021-03-07
• Show the timezone for datetimes in the Django admin - 2021-03-02
• Writing tests for the Django admin with pytest-django - 2021-03-02
• Adding extra read-only information to a Django admin change page - 2021-02-25
• PostgreSQL full-text search in the Django Admin - 2020-07-25

spatialite

• KNN queries with SpatiaLite - 2021-05-16

vega

• Vega-Lite bar charts in the same order as the data - 2021-05-15

wikipedia

• The Wikipedia page stats API - 2021-05-13

postgresql

• Constructing GeoJSON in PostgreSQL - 2021-04-24
• Using json_extract_path in PostgreSQL - 2021-04-13
• Using unnest() to use a comma-separated string as the input to an IN query - 2021-04-10
• Closest locations to a point - 2021-03-22
• Granting a PostgreSQL user read-only access to some tables - 2021-02-26
• Show the SQL schema for a PostgreSQL database - 2021-02-23

markdown

• Useful Markdown extensions in Python - 2021-04-03
• Rendering Markdown with the GitHub Markdown API - 2020-08-22
• Converting HTML and rich-text to Markdown - 2020-05-09

azure

• Writing an Azure Function that serves all traffic to a subdomain - 2021-03-27

zeit-now

• Redirecting all paths on a Vercel instance - 2021-03-27
• Running a Python ASGI app on Vercel - 2020-04-19

mediawiki

• How to run MediaWiki with SQLite on a macOS laptop - 2021-03-06

gis

• Downloading MapZen elevation tiles - 2021-02-04

cookiecutter

• Conditionally creating directories in cookiecutter - 2021-01-27
• Testing cookiecutter templates with pytest - 2021-01-27

jupyter

• Embedding JavaScript in a Jupyter notebook - 2021-01-22

github

• Syntax highlighting Python console examples with GFM - 2021-01-18
• Bulk fetching repository details with the GitHub GraphQL API - 2021-01-17
• Searching for repositories by topic using the GitHub GraphQL API - 2020-10-09
• Paginating through the GitHub GraphQL API with Python - 2020-07-09
• Accessing repository dependencies in the GitHub GraphQL API - 2020-04-30

aws

• Recovering data from AWS Lightsail using EC2 - 2021-01-16
• Display EC2 instance costs per month - 2020-09-06

readthedocs

• Using custom Sphinx templates on Read the Docs - 2020-12-07
• Read the Docs Search API - 2020-08-16
• Pointing a custom subdomain at Read the Docs - 2020-08-14

digitalocean

• Running Datasette on DigitalOcean App Platform - 2020-10-06

selenium

• Using async/await in JavaScript in Selenium - 2020-10-02
• Installing Selenium for Python on macOS with ChromeDriver - 2020-10-02

jinja

• Turning on Jinja autoescaping when using Template() directly - 2020-09-18

linux

• Basic strace to see what a process is doing - 2020-09-07
• Piping echo to a file owned by root using sudo and tee - 2020-08-24

typescript

• Very basic tsc usage - 2020-09-06

pytest

• Start a server in a subprocess during a pytest session - 2020-08-31
• Code coverage using pytest and codecov.io - 2020-08-15
• Registering temporary pluggy plugins inside tests - 2020-07-21
• Asserting a dictionary is a subset of another dictionary - 2020-05-28
• How to mock httpx using pytest-mock - 2020-04-29
• Session-scoped temporary directories in pytest - 2020-04-26

svg

• Creating a dynamic line chart with SVG - 2020-08-22

ics

• Providing a "subscribe in Google Calendar" link for an ics feed - 2020-08-21

heroku

• Programatically accessing Heroku PostgreSQL from GitHub Actions - 2020-08-18
• Upgrading a Heroku PostgreSQL database with pg:copy - 2020-07-20
• Using heroku pg:pull to restore a backup to a macOS laptop - 2020-07-10

zsh

• Customizing my zsh prompt - 2020-08-12

asgi

• Writing tests for the ASGI lifespan protocol with HTTPX - 2020-06-29

pypi

• Adding project links to PyPI - 2020-05-11

firefox

• Search across all loaded resources in Firefox - 2020-05-05

node

• Constant-time comparison of strings in Node - 2020-05-01

tailscale

• Restricting SSH connections to devices within a Tailscale network - 2020-04-23

presenting

• Using macOS stickies to display a workshop link on the screen - 2020-04-20