================================

Django 1.1 alpha 1 release notes

================================

February 23, 2009

Welcome to Django 1.1 alpha 1!

This is the first in a series of preview/development releases leading up to the

eventual release of Django 1.1, currently scheduled to take place in April 2009.

This release is primarily targeted at developers who are interested in trying

out new features and testing the Django codebase to help identify and resolve

bugs prior to the final 1.1 release.

As such, this release is *not* intended for production use, and any such use is

discouraged.

What's new in Django 1.1 alpha 1

================================

ORM improvements

----------------

Two major enhancements have been added to Django's object-relational mapper

(ORM):

Aggregate support

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. currentmodule:: django.db.models

It's now possible to run SQL aggregate queries (i.e. ``COUNT()``, ``MAX()``,

``MIN()``, etc.) from within Django's ORM. You can choose to either return the

results of the aggregate directly, or else annotate the objects in a

:class:`QuerySet` with the results of the aggregate query.

This feature is available as new :meth:`QuerySet.aggregate()`` and

:meth:`QuerySet.annotate()`` methods, and is covered in detail in :doc:`the ORM

aggregation documentation </topics/db/aggregation>`

Query expressions

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Queries can now refer to a another field on the query and can traverse

relationships to refer to fields on related models. This is implemented in the

new :class:`F` object; for full details, including examples, consult the

:ref:`documentation for F expressions <query-expressions>`.

Performance improvements

------------------------

.. currentmodule:: django.test

Tests written using Django's :doc:`testing framework </topics/testing>` now run

dramatically faster (as much as 10 times faster in many cases).

This was accomplished through the introduction of transaction-based tests: when

using :class:`django.test.TestCase`, your tests will now be run in a transaction

which is rolled back when finished, instead of by flushing and re-populating the

database. This results in an immense speedup for most types of unit tests. See

the documentation for :class:`TestCase` and :class:`TransactionTestCase` for a

full description, and some important notes on database support.

Other improvements

------------------

Other new features and changes introduced since Django 1.0 include:

* The :doc:`CSRF protection middleware </ref/contrib/csrf>` has been split into

  two classes -- ``CsrfViewMiddleware`` checks incoming requests, and

  ``CsrfResponseMiddleware`` processes outgoing responses. The combined

  ``CsrfMiddleware`` class (which does both) remains for

  backwards-compatibility, but using the split classes is now recommended in

  order to allow fine-grained control of when and where the CSRF processing

  takes place.

* :func:`~django.core.urlresolvers.reverse` and code which uses it (e.g., the

  ``{% url %}`` template tag) now works with URLs in Django's administrative

  site, provided that the admin URLs are set up via ``include(admin.site.urls)``

  (sending admin requests to the ``admin.site.root`` view still works, but URLs

  in the admin will not be "reversible" when configured this way).

* The ``include()`` function in Django URLconf modules can now accept sequences

  of URL patterns (generated by ``patterns()``) in addition to module names.

* Instances of Django forms (see :doc:`the forms overview </topics/forms/index>`)

  now have two additional methods, ``hidden_fields()`` and ``visible_fields()``,

  which return the list of hidden -- i.e., ``<input type="hidden">`` -- and

  visible fields on the form, respectively.

* The ``redirect_to`` generic view (see :doc:`the generic views documentation

  </ref/generic-views>`) now accepts an additional keyword argument

  ``permanent``. If ``permanent`` is ``True``, the view will emit an HTTP

  permanent redirect (status code 301). If ``False``, the view will emit an HTTP

  temporary redirect (status code 302).

* A new database lookup type -- ``week_day`` -- has been added for ``DateField``

  and ``DateTimeField``. This type of lookup accepts a number between 1 (Sunday)

  and 7 (Saturday), and returns objects where the field value matches that day

  of the week. See :ref:`the full list of lookup types <field-lookups>` for

  details.

* The ``{% for %}`` tag in Django's template language now accepts an optional

  ``{% empty %}`` clause, to be displayed when ``{% for %}`` is asked to loop

  over an empty sequence. See :doc:`the list of built-in template tags

  </ref/templates/builtins>` for examples of this.

The Django 1.1 roadmap

======================

Before Django 1.1 goes final, several other preview/development releases will be

made available. The current schedule consists of at least the following:

* Week of *March 20, 2009:* Django 1.1 beta 1, at which point Django 1.1 will

  be in "feature freeze": no new features will be implemented for 1.1

  past that point, and all new feature work will be deferred to

  Django 1.2.

* Week of *April 2, 2009:* Django 1.1 release candidate. At this point all

  strings marked for translation must freeze to allow translations to

  be submitted in advance of the final release.

* Week of *April 13, 2009:* Django 1.1 final.

If deemed necessary, additional alpha, beta or release candidate packages will

be issued prior to the final 1.1 release.

What you can do to help

=======================

In order to provide a high-quality 1.1 release, we need your help. Although this

alpha release is, again, *not* intended for production use, you can help the

Django team by trying out the alpha codebase in a safe test environment and

reporting any bugs or issues you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the

central place to search for open issues:

    * http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open new tickets if no existing ticket corresponds to a problem you're

running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress toward the

1.1 release, takes place daily on the django-developers mailing list:

    * http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

... and in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If you're

interested in helping out with Django's development, feel free to join the

discussions there.

Django's online documentation also includes pointers on how to contribute to

Django:

    * :doc:`How to contribute to Django </internals/contributing>`

Contributions on any level -- developing code, writing documentation or simply

triaging tickets and helping to test proposed bugfixes -- are always welcome and

appreciated.

Development sprints for Django 1.1 will also be taking place at PyCon US 2009,

on the dedicated sprint days (March 30 through April 2), and anyone who wants to

help out is welcome to join in, either in person at PyCon or virtually in the

IRC channel or on the mailing list.