Show HN: My first python web app - What do you want to do this year? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: My first python web app - What do you want to do this year?

thisyr.com

70 pointsjessratcliffe24 comments

You should probably set DEBUG at False. This is very undesirable in a production environment as it will probably leak sensitive information that attackers can use against your site. Unless, of course, if you use only the Django ORM.

Seconded - I tried to participate but wasn't willing to give access to my twitter account. It gave me a very verbose error page.

Thank you. I've tried setting debug to false but it causes a problem with the template. Do you know how I set it to false without affecting the design? I've tried a couple of ways as suggested on SO but all seem to return a server error.

How is your design affected?

For the case when the user isn't willing to give access to his/her twitter account.

The error returned is KeyError, since you are trying to access :

user = User.objects.get(username = authorized_tokens['screen_name'])

I see that you have put a try, except blocks. But you are not catching the KeyError exception. You are only making an exception when the user doesn't exist.

you should add a block : except KeyError. And figure out the logic for this particular case. (probably just redirecting the user to the home page)

I've got a 'KeyError at /twitter/thanks' when refusing access from the app to my twitter account (no offense meant, I was just testing it out) and then clicking on "Go Back to This Year" (which, I guess, is supposed to redirect me to the app?). I can send you the full error page if you want.

Anyways, kudos on your first Python app & keep building things!

Thanks! I'm so pleased to have finally built my first one. I'm sorry about the error - I'll look into it.

I was thinking of making a python web app integrated with Twitter. Why did you choose python over other languages and what else was in the stack?

Hi sycren, I mainly chose python because of http://learnpythonthehardway.org/. I've tried so many different tutorials but this one really clicked with me. I also used Django (following this https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.4/intro/tutorial01/) The other languages I used were HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery. Thanks to Twitter Bootstrap I didn't have to do much with the CSS. I would definitely recommend the tutorials above.

Looks cool, it would be nice to have some kind of voting system for pledges and maybe reminders to achieve the pledge every few months.

Also, the design works on mobile but isn't really that aesthetically pleasing with normal screen resolutions.

Getting some errors too: http://i.imgur.com/iLRRG.png

Thanks jimzvz. I'm planning to add more features over the next couple of weeks. Thanks for pointing out the errors - I'll look into those.

I quite like the simplicity of it. Personally, I'd move the "Submit" button next to the textbox for the resolution or directly underneath it (to the right of the checkbox's label).

Can I ask what framework you used (if any)? Also, it seems like you're repeating a lot of in-line css, you would really benefit of adding another CSS file.

It's Twitter Bootstrap.

Thanks arenaninja. Yes, I used Django and Twitter Bootstrap as proexploit said.

Nice app. Looks very similar to http://startupresolution.com that we launched on hn on 29th.

I like how the options are already pre-filled for you. It took me a second to realize I should scroll down, I wasn't sure what to do (if some element was clickable, etc).

good point. issue was that it was hard to fit the description and buttons above the fold. something clickable to scroll would have definitely been a good idea.

I've always loved that shade of orange (or is it closer to salmon?)

I keep seeing similar apps popping up on HN. Wish you guys the best! Making an app is simple, but do you have a plan to continuously improve your app/bring more people to your app. Take startupresolution.com for example, how many startup resolutions does a person make per year? Do you expect people to use it once or few times per year? Saying one thing is easy, but doing it is hard. One thing you guys might can try is that providing a feature to let people follow up the resolutions/iwant. Otherwise, it's not that useful.

Great point. Our goal was just to have a campaign but it would be nice to have a system to keep track of the resolutions and maybe have resources to keep them.

Thanks smit. Startup Resolution looks awesome. I love the design!

I like it tis pretty cool.

I'm not a Pythoner but I believe you have debug mode on, was revealing some errors to me.

Thanks ceeK. I've set the debug mode to false now.

Cool. What's the stack?

Thanks. It's built using Django, Bootstrap, Heroku, Postgres and twython.

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