Simon Willison: TIL

Things I've learned, collected in simonw/til.

Recently added: Using unnest() to use a comma-separated string as the input to an IN query, Efficient bulk deletions in Django, Language-specific indentation settings in VS Code, Useful Markdown extensions in Python, Writing an Azure Function that serves all traffic to a subdomain

postgresql

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

django

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

vscode

Language-specific indentation settings in VS Code - 2021-04-04

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

docker

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

python

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

sqlite

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

datasette

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

jq

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

mediawiki

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

github-actions

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

sphinx

Using sphinx.ext.extlinks for issue links - 2021-02-17

macos

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

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

javascript

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

bash

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

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

homebrew

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

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

cloudrun

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

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