.. _releases-1.1-beta-1:

===============================
Django 1.1 beta 1 release notes
===============================

March 23, 2009

Welcome to Django 1.1 beta 1!

This is the second 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 beta 1
===============================

.. seealso::

    The :ref:`1.1 alpha release notes <releases-1.1-alpha-1>`, which has a
    list of everything new between Django 1.0 and Django 1.1 alpha.

Model improvements
------------------

.. currentmodule:: django.db.models

A number of features have been added to Django's model layer:

"Unmanaged" models
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can now control whether or not Django creates database tables for a model
using the :attr:`~Options.managed` model option. This defaults to ``True``,
meaning that Django will create the appropriate database tables in
:djadmin:`syncdb` and remove them as part of :djadmin:`reset` command. That
is, Django *manages* the database table's lifecycle.

If you set this to ``False``, however, no database table creating or deletion
will be automatically performed for this model. This is useful if the model
represents an existing table or a database view that has been created by some
other means.

For more details, see the documentation for the :attr:`~Options.managed`
option.

Proxy models
~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can now create :ref:`proxy models <proxy-models>`: subclasses of existing
models that only add Python behavior and aren't represented by a new table.
That is, the new model is a *proxy* for some underlying model, which stores
all the real data.

All the details can be found in the :ref:`proxy models documentation
<proxy-models>`. This feature is similar on the surface to unmanaged models,
so the documentation has an explanation of :ref:`how proxy models differ from
unmanaged models <proxy-vs-unmanaged-models>`.

Deferred fields
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In some complex situations, your models might contain fields which could
contain a lot of data (for example, large text fields), or require expensive
processing to convert them to Python objects. If you know you don't need those
particular fields, you can now tell Django not to retrieve them from the
database.

You'll do this with the :ref:`new queryset methods <queryset-defer>`
``defer()`` and ``only()``.

New admin features
------------------

Since 1.1 alpha, a couple of new features have been added to Django's admin
application:

Editable fields on the change list
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can now make fields editable on the admin list views via the new
:ref:`list_editable <admin-list-editable>` admin option. These fields will show
up as form widgets on the list pages, and can be edited and saved in bulk.

Admin "actions"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You can now define :ref:`admin actions <ref-contrib-admin-actions>` that can perform
some action to a group of models in bulk. Users will be able to select objects on
the change list page and then apply these bulk actions to all selected objects.

Django ships with one pre-defined admin action to delete a group of objects in
one fell swoop.

Testing improvements
--------------------

.. currentmodule:: django.test.client

A couple of small but very useful improvements have been made to the
:ref:`testing framework <topics-testing>`:

    * The test :class:`Client` now can automatically follow redirects with the
      ``follow`` argument to :meth:`Client.get` and :meth:`Client.post`. This
      makes testing views that issue redirects simpler.
      
    * It's now easier to get at the template context in the response returned
      the test client: you'll simply access the context as
      ``request.context[key]``. The old way, which treats ``request.context``
      as a list of contexts, one for each rendered template, is still
      available if you need it.
      
Conditional view processing
---------------------------

Django now has much better support for :ref:`conditional view processing
<topics-conditional-processing>` using the standard ``ETag`` and
``Last-Modified`` HTTP headers. This means you can now easily short-circuit
view processing by testing less-expensive conditions. For many views this can
lead to a serious improvement in speed and reduction in bandwidth.

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

Finally, a grab-bag of other neat features made their way into this beta
release, including:

    * The :djadmin:`dumpdata` management command now accepts individual
      model names as arguments, allowing you to export the data just from
      particular models.
      
    * There's a new :tfilter:`safeseq` template filter which works just like
      :tfilter:`safe` for lists, marking each item in the list as safe.
      
    * :ref:`Cache backends <topics-cache>` now support ``incr()`` and
      ``decr()`` commands to increment and decrement the value of a cache key.
      On cache backends that support atomic increment/decrement -- most
      notably, the memcached backend -- these operations will be atomic, and
      quite fast.
      
    * Django now can :ref:`easily delegate authentication to the web server
      <howto-auth-remote-user>` via a new authentication backend that supports
      the standard ``REMOTE_USER`` environment variable used for this purpose.
      
    * There's a new :func:`django.shortcuts.redirect` function that makes it
      easier to issue redirects given an object, a view name, or a URL.
      
    * The ``postgresql_psycopg2`` backend now supports :ref:`native PostgreSQL
      autocommit <postgresql-notes>`. This is an advanced, PostgreSQL-specific
      feature, that can make certain read-heavy applications a good deal
      faster.

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

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

* 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 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
beta release is, again, *not* intended for production use, you can help the
Django team by trying out the beta 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.