[Web-SIG] ANN: Pylons 0.9.5 Released

[Ben Bangert]

I'm thrilled to announce a new release of Pylons, with one of the  
largest ticket fix counts of any Pylons release thus far. This  
release and its associated updates have only been possible with the  
growing and active Pylons community. A big shout-out to the many  
contributions by Phil Jenvey, Ian Bicking, James Gardner, Mike Orr,  
Shannon -jj Behrens, David Smith, Graham Higgins, and Wyatt Baldwin  
for their work on Pylons, Routes the mail list, and the  
documentation. Many thanks to the numerous others that have reported  
bugs and helped out on IRC and the mail list over the past few months.

Also, as Pylons uses so many contributed projects, there's work going  
on to better integrate documentation across the smaller projects that  
make up the whole. A first stab at this is being taken with the  
Python Web Documentation effort which we realize not every single  
'python web' project will be using; but its our hope that smaller  
WSGI based web components will put their docs up so they can all be  
utilized in a single place.

The new documentation wiki:
http://docs.pythonweb.org/


And onto update news for 0.9.5!

There's big change logs for both Pylons and Routes, with some  
important updates in WebHelpers and Paste as well.

First, the big improvements in 0.9.5, Unicode and i18n:
- Routes now translates utf-8 characters during both URL generation,  
and URL recognition, many thanks to David Smith for numerous patches
- The Request now has an option so that all GET/POST arguments come  
in as unicode, with the decoding you prefer
- i18n now uses code contributed from Aquarium by Shannon -jj Behrens  
for translation fall-backs and has browser language matching code
- Optional lazy translation options contributed by David Smith
- Routes implicit defaults (action=index, id=None) can be turned off  
per route with _explicit=True
- Routes memory can also be disabled by setting the mapper to  
explicit=True, which will also disable the implicit defaults


Next, some backward compatibility changes:

Webhelpers:
* WARNING: paginate now takes arguments intended for the collection  
object as
   query_args. This could affect backwards compatibility. This fixes  
a common
   issue that non-keyword arguments passed into paginate get eaten by  
paginate's
   keyword arguments instead of being in *args to go on to the  
collection.
* WARNING: Due to a typo, the Text helper highlight function no longer
   highlights text with the CSS class name 'hilight' by default: it  
now uses the
   CSS class name 'highlight' instead. The function's 'hilighter'  
keyword
   argument has also been deprecated, use 'highlighter' instead.

Pylons:
* WARNING: Pylons now requires the decorator module: it no longer  
packages
   it as pylons.decorator. Code relying on the  
pylons.decorator.decorator
   function will trigger a deprecation warning and should be changed  
to use
   decorator.decorator.
* WARNING: pylons.h was deprecated for using projects' lib.helpers  
module
   directly in 0.9.3. pylons.h is now formally deprecated (emits
   DeprecationWarnings). Projects still accessing pylons.h must  
change the
   following import:
       from pylons import h
   to:
       import MYPROJ.lib.helpers as h


And finally, the full changelog of the various parts that make Pylons  
what it is:

PYLONS
* Fixed paster shell breaking for projects where the base package was  
not
   the first package listed in top_level.txt. Patch from Alberto  
Valverde.
   Fixes #229.
* Fixed doc references to config['app_conf']. Fixes #116.
* Changed `get_engine_conf` to properly evaluate sqlalchemy echo  
statement
   when its 'debug'. Fixes #226.
* make_session and create_engine now accept keyword arguments to pass to
   SQLAlchemy's create_engine.
* make_session now accepts the keyword argument 'session_kwargs' to pass
   to SQLAlchemy's create_session.
* Fixed _inspect_call to call function with keyword arguments instead  
of list
   args. Corrects issue with action defaults that caused the value  
for the
   latter args to be in the wrong spots. Spotted by Topher. Fixes #223.
* Added the allow_none option (passed to xmlrpc.dumps) to  
XMLRPCController.
   Suggested by Jaroslaw Zabiello.
* Updated XMLRPC Controller with patch for name lookup and additional  
unit
   tests for the patch. Fixes #216.
* Updated docs for validate decorator to more clearly illustrate what  
the
   post_only args apply to. Fixes #221.
* Added ability to return strings in the WSGIController. Fixes #218.
* Added lazy i18n translation functions. Patch from David Smith.  
Fixes #181.
* Added fix for XMLRPCController system.methodHelp function and unit  
test.
   Patch and unit test submitted by Graham Higgins.
* Fixed bug in validate decorator with new UnicodeMultiDict response  
content
   not properly retaining form content as unicode for formencode's  
htmlfill.
* Fixed bug in XMLRPC Controller with xmlrpclib Faults not being  
properly
   transformed into a WSGI response within the controller.
* WARNING: Pylons now requires the decorator module: it no longer  
packages
   it as pylons.decorator. Code relying on the  
pylons.decorator.decorator
   function will trigger a deprecation warning and should be changed  
to use
   decorator.decorator.
* WARNING: pylons.h was deprecated for using projects' lib.helpers  
module
   directly in 0.9.3. pylons.h is now formally deprecated (emits
   DeprecationWarnings). Projects still accessing pylons.h must  
change the
   following import:
       from pylons import h
   to:
       import MYPROJ.lib.helpers as h
* pylons.jsonify and pylons.Controller references have been deprecated
   (they are misplaced references). They continue to be available at
   pylons.decorators.jsonify and pylons.controllers.Controller, as  
they always
   have been.
* Updated templating Buffet to recognize format parameter and  
properly pass it
   to the template engine.
* Updated LICENSE for new year and to indicate license covering  
templates
   generated. Fixes #188.
* Interactive debugger now supports Mako. After r1780 if you are using a
   custom theme you will need to change '%(myghty_data)s' to
   '%(template_data)s' in your template. If you are using JavaScript  
the tab
   id is now "template_data".
* Fixed bug in WSGIController with private function attempts not  
returning a
   valid WSGI response.
* Added full unit test coverage of cache decorator.
* Adding messages binary file, enabling i18n unit tests. Updating  
pylons.i18n
   to import LanguageError. Fixes #193.
* Adding i18n tests, not active yet as they're waiting on a binary  
file from a
   patch. Refs #193.
* Updated tests so that they now work with nose, removing py.test  
requirement.
* Switching config setup to load keys into main config dict with  
app_conf and
   global_conf keys set for any code looking for those keys. Fixes #116.
* PylonsInstaller is now the default paste.app_install entry point  
for new
   projects: this makes Cheetah no longer required for the paster  
make-config
   command. (Thanks Alexander Schremmer, Ian Bicking)
* Added custom redirect_to function in pylons.helpers that will take an
   optional _response arg to pull headers and cookies out for  
preservation
   during a redirect. Fixes #136.
* Changed config.Config.__init__ to take all options as keyword args so
   unused args can be skipped. Fixes #162.
* The request object can now automatically decode GET/POST/params  
vars to
   unicode, when its charset attribute is set.
* Added a new request_settings keyword arg to Config's constructor.  
Allows
   setting the default charset and errors values of of the request  
object.
* Deprecated Config constructor's default_charset keyword arg. Use  
Config's
   response_settings keyword arg instead.
* Fixed paster controller to test for lib.base and only add that import
   statement when its present. This fixes the controller template  
when used with
   minimal Pylons project templates. Fixes #140 and fixes #139.
* Fixed the paster shell error: KeyError: 'pylons.routes_dict' when  
calling
   app.get and app.post.
* Fixed paster shell not working on projects with names containing  
hyphens.
* Fixed the config directive 'sqlalchemy.echo' set to False being  
interpreted
   as True. Patch by Alex Conrad.
* Fixed paster shell not restoring CONFIG['global_conf'].


ROUTES
* Fixed matching so that an attempt to match an empty path raises a
   RouteException. Fixes #44.
* Added ability to use characters in URL's such as '-' and '_' in
   map.resource. Patch by Wyatt Baldwin. Fixes #45.
* Updated Mapper.resource handling with name_prefix and path_prefix  
checking
   to specify defaults. Also ensures that should either of them be  
set, they
   override the prefixes should parent_resource be specified. Patch  
by Wyatt
   Baldwin. Fixes #42.
* Added utf-8 decoding of incoming path arguments, with fallback to  
ignoring
   them in the very rare cases a malformed request URL is sent. Patch  
from
   David Smith.
* Fixed treatment of '#' character as something that can be left off and
   used in route paths. Found by Mike Orr.
* Added ability to specify parent resource to map.resource command.  
Patch from
   Wyatt Baldwin.
* Fixed formatted route issue with map.resource when additional  
collection
   methods are specified. Added unit tests to verify the collection  
methods
   work properly.
* Updated URL parsing to properly use HTTP_HOST for hostname + port  
info before
   falling back to SERVER_PORT and SERVER_NAME. Fixes #43.
* Added member_name and collection_name setting to Route object when  
made with
   map.resource.
* Updated routes.middleware to make the Routes matched accessible as
   environ['routes.route'].
* Updating mapper object to use thread local for request data (such as
   environ) and middleware now deletes environ references at the end  
of the
   request.
* Added explicit option to Routes and Mapper. Routes _explicit  
setting will
   prevent the Route defaults from being implicitly set, while  
setting Mapper
   to explicit will prevent Route implicit defaults and stop url_for  
from using
   Route memory. Fixes #38.
* Updated config object so that the route is attached if possible.
* Adding standard logging usage with debug messages.
* Added additional test for normal '.' match and fixed new special  
matching to
   match it properly. Thanks David Smith.
* Fixed hanging special char issue with 'special' URL chars at the  
end of a URL
   that are missing the variable afterwards.
* Changed Routes generation and recognition to handle other 'special'  
URL chars
   , . and ; as if they were /. This lets them be optionally left out  
of the
   resulting generated URL. Feature requested by David Smith.
* Fixed lookahead assertion in regexp builder to properly handle two  
grouped
   patterns in a row.
* Applied patch to generation and matching to handle Unicode characters
   properly. Reported with patch by David Smith.


WEBHELPERS
* WARNING: paginate now takes arguments intended for the collection  
object as
   query_args. This could affect backwards compatibility. This fixes  
a common
   issue that non-keyword arguments passed into paginate get eaten by  
paginate's
   keyword arguments instead of being in *args to go on to the  
collection.
* Added environ checking with Routes so that page will be  
automatically pulled
   out of the query string, or from the Routes match dict if available.
* Added ability for paginate to check for objects that had SQLAlchemy's
   assign_mapper applied to them.
* Added better range checking to paginator to require a positive  
value that is
   less than the total amount of pages available for a page.
* WARNING: Due to a typo, the Text helper highlight function no longer
   highlights text with the CSS class name 'hilight' by default: it  
now uses the
   CSS class name 'highlight' instead. The function's 'hilighter'  
keyword
   argument has also been deprecated, use 'highlighter' instead.
* Fixed the broken markdown function.
* Upgraded markdown from 1.5 to 1.6a.
* Sync'd Prototype helper to 6057.
* Sync'd Urls helper to 6070.
* Sync'd Text helper to 6096.
* Sync'd Date helper to 6080.
* Sync'd Tags helper to 5857.
* Sync'd Asset tag helper to 6057.
* Sync'd Rails Number helper to 6045.
* Updated Ajax commands to internally use 'with_' to avoid name  
conflicts with
   Python 2.5 and beyond. Reported by anilj. Fixes #190.
* Applied patch from David Smith to decode URL parts as Routes does.
   Fixes #186.
* Changed pagination to give better response if its passed an invalid  
object.
   Patch from Christoph Haas.
* Fixed scriptaculous helper docs example. Fixes #178.
* Updated scriptaculous/prototype to Prototype 1.5.0 and  
Scriptaculous 1.7.0.
* Updated scriptaculous javascripts to 1.6.5. Fixes #155.
* Updated remote_function doc-string to more clearly indicate the  
arguments
   it can receive.
* Synced Rails Javascript helper to 5245 (escape_javascript now escaping
   backslashes and allow passing html_options to javascript_tag).


PASTE
* In ``paste.httpserver`` remove the reverse DNS lookup to set
   ``REMOTE_HOST``

* In ``paste.fileapp``, if the client sends both If-None-Match and
   If-Modified-Since, prefer If-None-Match.  Make ETags include the
   size as well as last modified timestamp.  Make it possible to
   override how mimetypes are guessed.

* ``HTTPException`` objects now have a ``exc.response(environ)``
   method that returns a ``WSGIResponse`` object.

* ``egg:Paste#watch_threads`` will show tracebacks of each thread
   under Python 2.5.

* Made ``paste.util.template`` trim whitespace around statements that
   are on their own line.

* ``paste.fileapp.DataApp`` now accepts ``allowed_headers=[...]`` to
   specify the allowed headers.  By default only ``GET`` and ``HEAD``
   are allowed.

* Added ``paste.util.import_string.try_import_module``, which imports
   modules and catches ``ImportError``, but only if it's an error
   importing the specific module, not an uncaught ``ImportError`` in
   the module being imported.

PASTESCRIPT
1.3.3
-----

* Fixed problem with ``paster serve`` on Windows.  Also on Windows,
   fixed issue with executables with spaces in their names (this case
   requires the ``win32all`` module).

* You can use ``+dot+`` in your project template filenames,
   specifically so that you can use leading dots in the filename.
   Usually leading dots cause the file to be ignored.  So if you want
   to have new projects contain a ``.cvsignore`` file, you can put a
   ``+dot+cvsignore`` file in your template.

* Relatedly, ``+plus+`` has been added so you can include pluses.

1.3.2
-----

* ``paster`` was largely broken under Windows; fixed.

1.3.1
-----

* Fix related to Python 2.5 (when there are errors creating files, you
   could get infinite recursion under Python 2.5).

* Use ``subprocess`` module in ``paster serve`` command.  Added
   ``--monitor`` option which will restart the server if it exits.

* The ``exe`` command now does % substitution in keys (e.g.,
   ``pid_file=%(here)s/paste.pid``).

* Some import problems with Cheetah should be improved.

1.3
---

* Fixed an exception being raised when shutting down flup servers using
   sockets.

* Fixed the CherryPy 3 WSGI server entry point's handling of SIGHUP
   and SIGTERM.

* The CherryPy wsgiserver is now available at
   ``paste.script.wsgiserver`` (no longer requiring CherryPy to be
   installed).

* Added entry point for twisted server.

* Made ``paste.script.pluginlib:egg_info_dir`` work with packages that
   put the ``Package.egg-info/`` directory in a subdirectory (typically
   ``src/``).

* Remove Cheetah requirement.  Packages using Cheetah templates should
   require Cheetah themselves.  If you are using ``paster make-config``
   and you *don't* want to use Cheetah, you must add ``use_cheetah =
   False`` to your ``Installer`` subclass (it defaults to true for
   backward compatibility).

* Make scripts work when there is no ``setup.py`` (if you aren't
   making a Python/setuptools package).

* When using ``paste.script.copydir.copy_dir`` (as with most ``paster
   create`` templates), you can raise ``SkipTemplate`` (or call the
   ``skip_template()`` function) which will cause the template to be
   skipped.  You can use this to conditionally include files.

* When using ``paster serve c:/...``, it should no longer confuse
   ``c:`` with a scheme (such as ``config:`` or ``egg:``).

* More careful about catching import errors in ``websetup``, so if you
   have a bug in your ``app.websetup`` module it won't swallow it.


Cheers,
Ben