Sorting a Django queryset by a custom order is trickier than it looks, and choosing the wrong solution for your use case can cripple your application’s performance. For example, let’s take a simple Todo model: class Todo(models.Model): class Priority(models.TextChoices): HIGH = "HIGH", _("High") MEDIUM = "MEDIUM", _("Medium") LOW = "LOW", _("Low") title = models.CharField(max_length=255) priority = models.CharField(max_length=10, choices=Priority.choices, db_index=True) done = models.BooleanField(default=False) And a list of todos: Id Title Priority Done 1 Add linters Medium Yes 2 Fix bug High No 3 Increase test coverage Medium No 4 Refactor views Low No 5 Run tests in CI High Yes Our query set goal is to order these items from high to low priority. For priority levels with multiple items, we’ll also order by title to keep the results consistent. The expected result should be the id’s in the following order: [2, 5, 1, 3, 4] ...

On a development team, you never want to push directly to the main branch. Instead, you want to require changes to be made through pull requests so they can be properly reviewed by other developers. Some developers, including myself, occasionally forget to push to a new branch so I like to have an automated check to prevent this mistake. Here are two methods to block direct pushes to the GitHub main branch. ...

Misconfigured Docker containers can be slow, heavy and difficult to maintain. This leads to sluggish releases, high storage costs and frustrated developers. Moreover, inadequate Docker containers can be a major security liability. A recent report by Aqua Security found that 50% of new Docker instances are attacked within 56 minutes of being deployed. Docker problems can be devastating for any business and software teams need to put in the time and energy to alleviate these risks. ...

See the source code for a working example. Next.js is a popular React Framework that comes with a lot of great features such as hybrid static & server rendering, smart bundling, file system routing, and much more. I prefer it over vanilla React. When we dockerize a Next.js application, we want the final production and development images to be small, fast to build and easy to maintain. Let’s see how we can use multi-stage builds and other image optimization techniques to create the ideal images. ...

See the source code for a working example. UI testing is a critical part of any modern web application. My favorite testing framework is Cypress which enables you to write clean, fast and reliable tests. It consists of two main commands: cypress run: Runs Cypress tests from the CLI without a GUI. Used mostly in CI/CD. cypress open: Opens Cypress in an interactive GUI. Used for local development. I like to dockerize my entire application so it can be run anywhere (my machine, coworker’s machine, CI/CD, etc.) and Cypress is no exception. We’re going to dockerize the cypress run and cypress open commands for a simple Todo application written in Django and Next.js (check out the source code). ...