How to be helped

or; Why is FunkyBob angry with me?

Who am I?

FunkyBob
https://github.com/funkybob

django-nap
formulation
IE7 Tax

Malcolm Tredinnick Memorial Prize winner.

Helping in #django since (at least) 2006

Why do I help?

It's how I was raised.
It inspires me to write:
  1. sniplates
  2. formulation
I learn a LOT.
Including, about what's wrong with Django.

What you're doing wrong


Some examples.

Tell me the problem you want to solve

Not the solution you want to fix.
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/jonathan.deboynepollard/FGA/put-down-the-chocolate-covered-banana.html

Some questions are logically nonsensical because the querent thinks they know more than they do.

A lot of these have the form ‘How do I use X to accomplish Y?’ There's nothing wrong with this, except that sometimes X is a chocolate-covered banana and Y is the integration of European currency systems.

Mark-Jason Dominus 

Case study

 [18:33] <xeon123> I want to show the fields of a json file in a html form. How I do this with django?

24 minutes later...

 [18:57] <FunkyBob> your real problem is "How can I present a form to edit my settings, which are stored in JSON?"

I got "an error"


Oh really?

Any particular error?

You're doing it wrong

NO I'M NOT!

Then why isn't it working?
And why are you asking for help?

Abstract confusion


Table A has a FK to B and also a FK to User
I want all rows in B that are NOT a FK in A when User_id = 1

class A(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey('auth.User')

class B(models.Model):
    a = models.ForeignKey('a')

OR


I have a table called Ranks. This table holds rankings of Game titles that a user has ranked. So: Rank: rank_id, user_id(FK=User), game_id(FK_Game), rank)
Game is another table which is: Game: game_id, name
I want all 'unranked' games for user 1

class Ranks(models.Model):
    user = models.ForeignKey('auth.User')
    game = models.ForeignKey('Game')

Drip fed constraints

How can you do better?

Things to do.
Things to remember.

We're all volunteers

Try it first

aka: "Suck it and see"

Rubber Ducking

aka Turing's Teddy Bear

Answer our questions

Yes, all of them.
No, not the ones you think we meant.
The ones we actually asked.

No, we're not mind readers!

Don't waste our time


11:53 < FunkyBob> hyp3rkyd: nope... would need more details
11:53 < hyp3rkyd> FunkyBob:  like ?
11:54 < FunkyBob> hyp3rkyd: like which url conf it's talking about, and what's in it
11:54 < FunkyBob> hyp3rkyd: probalby also some details on how you've configured mod_wsgi... and if anything else in your project is working
Still no dpaste...

12:02 < Maior> hyp3rkyd: because having previously wasted time on people who "just removed some irrelevant stuff" (that turned out to be useful), I just don't see it as worthwhile any more
12:03 < hyp3rkyd> Maior: well I am not one of those people and I respect the time of people helping
Still no dpaste... not until 12:08... so, 15 minutes later...

Don't believe me?


Try it yourself some time.

PLEASE!

Exposition:  when you're helping in a public forum, you're talking to everyone, not just the other person.
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