Month: October 2012

by

Simulating ENUM in PostgreSQL using CHECK expression

PostgreSQL is a very powerful database. One of the things that seems missing when moving from MySQL is the ability to simply create an enumeration. ENUM is nice when you have a programmatically-semantic set of values for a field.

In PostgreSQL, you have several choices. But one simple one is to create a Check expression, like follows. Skip the IS NULL part if you don’t want the field nullable.

ALTER TABLE 
   "public"."CallCenter_Transfer"
ADD CONSTRAINT 
   "CallCenter_Transfer_TransferStatus"
   CHECK (
      "TransferStatus" IS NULL 
       OR 
      "TransferStatus" = ANY(ARRAY['TransferComplete', 'TransferFailedNoAnswer', 'TransferFailedProspectLost'])
      )
by

nginx + apache + mod_wsgi + python: how to make dynamic pages expire

When writing dynamic web applications, we use nginx as a front-end web server and apache+mod_wsgi as an application server.

It is the job of nginx to:

  1. Handle SSL, and domain-level rewriting/redirects
  2. Handle static content (.jpeg, .png, .css, .js, .txt, .ico, .pdf, etc….)
  3. Handle dynamic downloads through X-Accel-Redirect
  4. Proxy other requests to apache
  5. Set the proper cache-control and expires headers on content

Ever run into the situation where you click log out, and then click the back button, and are still able to see the pages!  That is bad.   They are dynamic pages anyway, and should not be cached.

However, images, etc… SHOULD be cached. It is important that any references to images have a way to invalidate the cache. We append a number as a query string:

/path/to/script.js?192012129

This number is updated from time to time (via Python variable) when we need to invalidate the cache.

Anyway, here are some helpful nginx configuration directives.

# Send static requests directly back to the client
location ~ \.(gif|jpg|png|ico|xml|html|css|js|txt|pdf)$
{
    root  /path/to/document/root;
    expires max;
}

# Send the rest to apache
location /
{
    add_header Cache-Control 'no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate';
    add_header Expires 'Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:01 GMT';
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8123;
}
by

Why you should consider using the IUS Community Project

From http://iuscommunity.org/

“The IUS Community Project is aimed at providing up to date and regularly maintained RPM packages for the latest upstream versions of PHP, Python, MySQL and other common software specifically for Redhat Enterprise Linux. IUS can be thought of as a better way to upgrade RHEL, when you need to.”

Our Perspective at AppCove

http://www.appcove.com/yumrepo/

Imagine being able to combine the rock-solid stability of RedHat Enterprise Linux (or Oracle, Centos, Scientific) with the latest versions of popular software packages like PHP, Python, MySQL, mod_wsgi, redis, and others? The IUS Community Project is the answer.

Enterprise Linux is great for the stability, security, and compatibility. But sometimes you need a newer version of an installed package, like Python. At the time of this writing, RedHat is still not providing any standard way to obtain Python 3.2, MySQL 5.5, or PHP 5.4, years after they have been released.

The IUS Community project has provided AppCove, Inc. and all of our clients the perfect mix of stability and functionality. IUS has enabled us to focus on our core competencies (software development) while being confident that the packages we use are as secure and up-to-date as possible.

Our confidence in the IUS team is second to none. AppCove has worked in close conjunction with the IUS team on several occasions, and they have always been impeccably experienced, knowledgeable, and professional.

We highly recommend that any users of RedHat Enterprise Linux, Oracle Enterprise Linux, Scientific Linux, or Centos Linux take a close look at the IUS Community Project for their servers.