.. _releases-1.1-alpha-1:

================================
Django 1.1 alpha 1 release notes
================================

February 23, 2009

Welcome to Django 1.1 alpha 1!

This is the first in a series of preview/development releases leading up to the
eventual release of Django 1.1, currently scheduled to take place in April 2009.
This release is primarily targeted at developers who are interested in trying
out new features and testing the Django codebase to help identify and resolve
bugs prior to the final 1.1 release.

As such, this release is *not* intended for production use, and any such use is
discouraged.

What's new in Django 1.1 alpha 1
================================

ORM improvements
----------------

Two major enhancements have been added to Django's object-relational mapper
(ORM):

Aggregate support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

.. currentmodule:: django.db.models

It's now possible to run SQL aggregate queries (i.e. ``COUNT()``, ``MAX()``,
``MIN()``, etc.) from within Django's ORM. You can choose to either return the
results of the aggregate directly, or else annotate the objects in a
:class:`QuerySet` with the results of the aggregate query.

This feature is available as new :meth:`QuerySet.aggregate()`` and
:meth:`QuerySet.annotate()`` methods, and is covered in detail in :ref:`the ORM
aggregation documentation <topics-db-aggregation>`

Query expressions
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Queries can now refer to a another field on the query and can traverse
relationships to refer to fields on related models. This is implemented in the
new :class:`F` object; for full details, including examples, consult the
:ref:`documentation for F expressions <query-expressions>`.

Performance improvements
------------------------

.. currentmodule:: django.test

Tests written using Django's :ref:`testing framework <topics-testing>` now run
dramatically faster (as much as 10 times faster in many cases).

This was accomplished through the introduction of transaction-based tests: when
using :class:`django.test.TestCase`, your tests will now be run in a transaction
which is rolled back when finished, instead of by flushing and re-populating the
database. This results in an immense speedup for most types of unit tests. See
the documentation for :class:`TestCase` and :class:`TransactionTestCase` for a
full description, and some important notes on database support.

Other improvements
------------------

Other new features and changes introduced since Django 1.0 include:

* The :ref:`CSRF protection middleware <ref-contrib-csrf>` has been split into
  two classes -- ``CsrfViewMiddleware`` checks incoming requests, and
  ``CsrfResponseMiddleware`` processes outgoing responses. The combined
  ``CsrfMiddleware`` class (which does both) remains for
  backwards-compatibility, but using the split classes is now recommended in
  order to allow fine-grained control of when and where the CSRF processing
  takes place.

* :func:`~django.core.urlresolvers.reverse` and code which uses it (e.g., the
  ``{% url %}`` template tag) now works with URLs in Django's administrative
  site, provided that the admin URLs are set up via ``include(admin.site.urls)``
  (sending admin requests to the ``admin.site.root`` view still works, but URLs
  in the admin will not be "reversible" when configured this way).

* The ``include()`` function in Django URLconf modules can now accept sequences
  of URL patterns (generated by ``patterns()``) in addition to module names.

* Instances of Django forms (see `the forms overview <topics-forms-index>`_ now
  have two additional methods, ``hidden_fields()`` and ``visible_fields()``,
  which return the list of hidden -- i.e., ``<input type="hidden">`` -- and
  visible fields on the form, respectively.

* The ``redirect_to`` generic view (see `the generic views documentation
  <ref-generic-views>`_) now accepts an additional keyword argument
  ``permanent``. If ``permanent`` is ``True``, the view will emit an HTTP
  permanent redirect (status code 301). If ``False``, the view will emit an HTTP
  temporary redirect (status code 302).

* A new database lookup type -- ``week_day`` -- has been added for ``DateField``
  and ``DateTimeField``. This type of lookup accepts a number between 1 (Sunday)
  and 7 (Saturday), and returns objects where the field value matches that day
  of the week. See `the full list of lookup types <field-lookups>`_ for details.

* The ``{% for %}`` tag in Django's template language now accepts an optional
  ``{% empty %}`` clause, to be displayed when ``{% for %}`` is asked to loop
  over an empty sequence. See :ref:`the list of built-in template tags
  <ref-templates-builtins>` for examples of this.

The Django 1.1 roadmap
======================

Before Django 1.1 goes final, several other preview/development releases will be
made available. The current schedule consists of at least the following:

* Week of *March 20, 2009:* Django 1.1 beta 1, at which point Django 1.1 will
  be in "feature freeze": no new features will be implemented for 1.1
  past that point, and all new feature work will be deferred to
  Django 1.2.

* Week of *April 2, 2009:* Django 1.1 release candidate. At this point all
  strings marked for translation must freeze to allow translations to
  be submitted in advance of the final release.

* Week of *April 13, 2009:* Django 1.1 final.

If deemed necessary, additional alpha, beta or release candidate packages will
be issued prior to the final 1.1 release.

What you can do to help
=======================

In order to provide a high-quality 1.1 release, we need your help. Although this
alpha release is, again, *not* intended for production use, you can help the
Django team by trying out the alpha codebase in a safe test environment and
reporting any bugs or issues you encounter. The Django ticket tracker is the
central place to search for open issues:

    * http://code.djangoproject.com/timeline

Please open new tickets if no existing ticket corresponds to a problem you're
running into.

Additionally, discussion of Django development, including progress toward the
1.1 release, takes place daily on the django-developers mailing list:

    * http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers

... and in the ``#django-dev`` IRC channel on ``irc.freenode.net``. If you're
interested in helping out with Django's development, feel free to join the
discussions there.

Django's online documentation also includes pointers on how to contribute to
Django: 

    * :ref:`How to contribute to Django <internals-contributing>`

Contributions on any level -- developing code, writing documentation or simply
triaging tickets and helping to test proposed bugfixes -- are always welcome and
appreciated.

Development sprints for Django 1.1 will also be taking place at PyCon US 2009,
on the dedicated sprint days (March 30 through April 2), and anyone who wants to
help out is welcome to join in, either in person at PyCon or virtually in the
IRC channel or on the mailing list.
