There are many cases where it is useful to serialize data structures to text, such as persistence in the filesystem or transmission across the network. One of the most popular uses is to use ECMAScript to update a web page without reloading, using an asynchronous channel to a web server (AJAX). Other popular uses are for configuration files, data [...]

There are a number of very powerful template languages available in Python. Some template languages, such as Genshi , allow complex Python statements and even full Python code within the template file. Others, such as Django templates, prefer to restrict templates to presentation only and do not allow general Python expressions within the body of [...]

Social bookmarking sites such as reddit, digg and del.icio.us have become very popular and are often heralded as the best examples of the Web 2.0 phenomenom. They allow like-minded users to share and comment on links they have found, and may seem like the ultimate distribution medium for content, but these sites are in essence fundamentally flawed [...]

There are a number of (very good) templating systems and languages available for Python. They fall in to one of two camps; either they are XML based, like Genshi, or they are text based, like Mako. Most programmers favour one or the other, but there is far from a consensus over which is better. I'd like to use this debate to gather reasons for [...]