Using Localstack for a fake AWS S3 for local development

Summary

Over the last year, I rewrote the Socorro collector which is the edge of the Mozilla crash ingestion pipeline. Antenna (the new collector) receives crashes from Breakpad clients as HTTP POSTs, converts the POST payload into JSON, and then saves a bunch of stuff to AWS S3. One of the problems with this is that it's a pain in the ass to do development on my laptop without being connected to the Internet and using AWS S3.

This post covers the various things I did to have a locally running fake AWS S3 service.

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Everett v0.9 released and why you should use Everett

What is it?

Everett is a Python configuration library.

Configuration with Everett:

  • is composeable and flexible

  • makes it easier to provide helpful error messages for users trying to configure your software

  • supports auto-documentation of configuration with a Sphinx autocomponent directive

  • supports easy testing with configuration override

  • can pull configuration from a variety of specified sources (environment, ini files, dict, write-your-own)

  • supports parsing values (bool, int, lists of things, classes, write-your-own)

  • supports key namespaces

  • supports component architectures

  • works with whatever you're writing--command line tools, web sites, system daemons, etc

Everett is inspired by python-decouple and configman.

v0.9 released!

This release focused on overhauling the Sphinx extension. It now:

  • has an Everett domain

  • supports roles

  • indexes Everett components and options

  • looks a lot better

This was the last big thing I wanted to do before doing a 1.0 release. I consider Everett 0.9 to be a solid beta. Next release will be a 1.0.

Why you should take a look at Everett

At Mozilla, I'm using Everett 0.9 for Antenna which is running in our -stage environment and will go to -prod very soon. Antenna is the edge of the crash ingestion pipeline for Mozilla Firefox.

When writing Antenna, I started out with python-decouple, but I didn't like the way python-decouple dealt with configuration errors (it's pretty hands-off) and I really wanted to automatically generate documentation from my configuration code. Why write the same stuff twice especially where it's a critical part of setting Antenna up and the part everyone will trip over first?

Here's the configuration documentation for Antenna:

http://antenna.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration.html#application

Here's the index which makes it easy to find things by component or by option (in this case, environment variables):

http://antenna.readthedocs.io/en/latest/genindex.html

When you configure Antenna incorrectly, it spits out an error message like this:

1  <traceback omitted, but it'd be here>
2  everett.InvalidValueError: ValueError: invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'foo'
3  namespace=None key=statsd_port requires a value parseable by int
4  Port for the statsd server
5  For configuration help, see https://antenna.readthedocs.io/en/latest/configuration.html

So what's here?:

  • Block 1 is the traceback so you can trace the code if you need to.

  • Line 2 is the exception type and message

  • Line 3 tells you the namespace, key, and parser used

  • Line 4 is the documentation for that specific configuration option

  • Line 5 is the "see also" documentation for the component with that configuration option

Is it beautiful? No. [1] But it gives you enough information to know what the problem is and where to go for more information.

Further, in Python 3, Everett will always raise a subclass of ConfigurationError so if you don't like the output, you can tailor it to your project's needs. [2]

First-class docs. First-class configuration error help. First-class testing. This is why I created Everett.

If this sounds useful to you, take it for a spin. It's almost a drop-in replacement for python-decouple [3] and os.environ.get('CONFIGVAR', 'default_value') style of configuration.

Enjoy!

Where to go for more

For more specifics on this release, see here: http://everett.readthedocs.io/en/latest/history.html#april-7th-2017

Documentation and quickstart here: https://everett.readthedocs.org/en/v0.9/

Source code and issue tracker here: https://github.com/willkg/everett

Bleach v2.0 released!

What is it?

Bleach is a Python library for sanitizing and linkifying text from untrusted sources for safe usage in HTML.

Bleach v2.0 released!

Bleach 2.0 is a massive rewrite. Bleach relies on the html5lib library. html5lib 0.99999999 (8 9s) changed the APIs that Bleach was using to sanitize text. As such, in order to support html5lib >= 0.99999999 (8 9s), I needed to rewrite Bleach.

Before embarking on the rewrite, I improved the tests and added a set of tests based on XSS example strings from the OWASP site. Spending quality time with tests before a rewrite or refactor is both illuminating (you get a better understanding of what the requirements are) and also immensely helpful (you know when your rewrite/refactor differs from the original). That was time well spent.

Given that I was doing a rewrite anyways, I decided to take this opportunity to break the Bleach API to make it more flexible and easier to use:

  • added Cleaner and Linkifier classes that you can create once and reuse to reduce redundant work--suggested in #125

  • created BleachSanitizerFilter which is now an html5lib filter that can be used anywhere you can use an html5lib filter

  • created LinkifyFilter as an html5lib filter that can be used anywhere you use an html5lib filter including as part of cleaning allowing you to clean and linkify in one pass--suggested in #46

  • changed arguments for attribute callables and linkify callbacks

  • and so on

During and after the rewrite, I improved the documentation converting all the examples to doctest format so they're testable and verifiable and adding examples where there weren't any. This uncovered bugs in the documentation and pointed out some annoyances with the new API.

As I rewrote and refactored code, I focused on making the code simpler and easier to maintain going forward and also documented the intentions so I and others can know what the code should be doing.

I also adjusted the internals to make it easier for users to extend, subclass, swap out and whatever else to adjust the functionality to meet their needs without making Bleach harder to maintain for me or less safe because of additional complexity.

For API-adjustment inspiration, I went through the Bleach issue tracker and tried to address every possible issue with this update: infinite loops, unintended behavior, inflexible APIs, suggested refactorings, features, bugs, etc.

The rewrite took a while. I tried to be meticulous because this is a security library and it's a complicated problem domain and I was working on my own during slow times on work projects. When working on one's own, you don't have benefit of review. Making sure to have good test coverage and waiting a day to self-review after posting a PR caught a lot of issues. I also go through the PR and add comments explaining why I did things to give context to future me. Those habits help a lot, but probably aren't as good as a code review by someone else.

Some stats

OMG! This blog post is so boring! Walls of text everywhere so far!

There were 61 commits between v1.5 and v2.0:

  • Vadim Kotov: 1

  • Alexandr N. Zamaraev: 2

  • me: 58

I closed out 22 issues--possibly some more.

The rewrite has the following git diff --shortstat:

64 files changed, 2330 insertions(+), 1128 deletions(-)

Lines of code for Bleach 1.5:

~/mozilla/bleach> cloc bleach/ tests/
      11 text files.
      11 unique files.
       0 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=0.07 s (152.4 files/s, 25287.2 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          11            353            200           1272
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            11            353            200           1272
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~/mozilla/bleach>

Lines of code for Bleach 2.0:

~/mozilla/bleach> cloc bleach/ tests/
      49 text files.
      49 unique files.
      36 files ignored.

http://cloc.sourceforge.net v 1.60  T=0.13 s (101.7 files/s, 20128.5 lines/s)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Language                     files          blank        comment           code
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Python                          13            545            406           1621
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SUM:                            13            545            406           1621
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
~/mozilla/bleach>

Some off-the-cuff performance benchmarks

I ran some timings between Bleach 1.5 and various uses of Bleach 2.0 on the Standup corpus.

Here's the results:

what?

time to clean and linkify

Bleach 1.5

1m33s

Bleach 2.0 (no code changes)

41s

Bleach 2.0 (using Cleaner and Linker)

10s

Bleach 2.0 (clean and linkify--one pass)

7s

How'd I compute the timings?

  1. I'm using the Standup corpus which has 42000 status messages in it. Each status message is like a tweet--it's short, has some links, possibly has HTML in it, etc.

  2. I wrote a timing harness that goes through all those status messages and times how long it takes to clean and linkify the status message content, accumulates those timings and then returns the total time spent cleaning and linking.

  3. I ran that 10 times and took the median. The timing numbers were remarkably stable and there was only a few seconds difference between the high and low for all of the sets.

  4. I wrote the median number down in that table above.

  5. Then I'd adjust the code as specified in the table and run the timings again.

I have several observations/thoughts:

First, holy moly--1m33s to 7s is a HUGE performance improvement.

Second, just switching from Bleach 1.5 to 2.0 and making no code changes (in other words, keeping your calls as bleach.clean and bleach.linkify rather than using Cleaner and Linker and LinkifyFilter), gets you a lot. Depending on whether your have attribute filter callables and linkify callbacks, you may be able to just upgrade the libs and WIN!

Third, switching to reusing Cleaner and Linker also gets you a lot.

Fourth, your mileage may vary depending on the nature of your corpus. For example, Standup status messages are short so if your text fragments are larger, you may see more savings by clean-and-linkify in one pass because HTML parsing takes more time.

How to upgrade

Upgrading should be straight-forward.

Here's the minimal upgrade path:

  1. Update Bleach to 2.0 and html5lib to >= 0.99999999 (8 9s).

  2. If you're using attribute callables, you'll need to update them.

  3. If you're using linkify callbacks, you'll need to update them.

  4. Read through version 2.0 changes for any other backwards-incompatible changes that might affect you.

  5. Run your tests and see how it goes.

If you want better performance:

  1. Switch to reusing bleach.sanitizer.Cleaner and bleach.linkifier.Linker.

If you have large text fragments:

  1. Switch to reusing bleach.sanitizer.Cleaner and set filters to include LinkifyFilter which lets you clean and linkify in one step.

Many thanks

Many thanks to James Socol (previous maintainer) for walking me through why things were the way they were.

Many thanks to Geoffrey Sneddon (html5lib maintainer) for answering questions, helping with problems I encountered and all his efforts on html5lib which is a huge library that he works on in his spare time for which he doesn't get anywhere near enough gratitude.

Many thanks to Lonnen (my manager) who heard me talk about html5lib zero point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine a bunch.

Also, many thanks to Mozilla for letting me work on this during slow periods of the projects I should be working on. A bunch of Mozilla sites use Bleach, but none of mine do.

Where to go for more

For more specifics on this release, see here: https://bleach.readthedocs.io/en/latest/changes.html#version-2-0-march-8th-2017

Documentation and quickstart here: https://bleach.readthedocs.org/en/v2.0/

Source code and issue tracker here: https://github.com/mozilla/bleach

Who uses my stuff?

Summary

I work on a lot of different things. Some are applications, are are libraries, some I started, some other people started, etc. I have way more stuff to do than I could possibly get done, so I try to spend my time on things "that matter".

For Open Source software that doesn't have an established community, this is difficult.

This post is a wandering stream of consciousness covering my journey figuring out who uses Bleach.

Read more…

Everett v0.8 released!

What is it?

Everett is a Python configuration library.

Configuration with Everett:

  • is composeable and flexible

  • makes it easier to provide helpful error messages for users trying to configure your software

  • can pull configuration from a variety of specified sources (environment, ini files, dict, write-your-own)

  • supports parsing values (bool, int, lists of things, classes, write-your-own)

  • supports key namespaces

  • facilitates writing tests that change configuration values

  • supports component architectures with auto-documentation of configuration with a Sphinx autoconfig directive

  • works with whatever you're writing--command line tools, web sites, system daemons, etc

Everett is inspired by python-decouple and configman.

v0.8 released!

As I sat down to write this, I discovered I'd never written about Everett before. I wrote it initially as part of another project and then extracted it and did a first release in August 2016.

Since then, I've been tinkering with how it works in relation to how it's used and talking with peers to understand their thoughts on configuration.

At this stage, I like Everett and it's at a point where it's worth telling others about and probably due for a 1.0 release.

This is v0.8. In this release, I spent some time polishing the autoconfig Sphinx directive to make it more flexible to use in your project documentation. Instead of having configuration bits all over your project, you centralize it in one place and then in your Sphinx docs, you have something like:

.. autoconfig:: path.to.AppConfig

and it happily spits out the relevant configuration documentation. For example, here's Antenna's configuration documentation.

It'd be nice if configuration variables showed up in the index. I'll mull over that later.

Where to go for more

For more specifics on this release, see here: https://everett.readthedocs.io/en/latest/history.html#january-24th-2017

Documentation and quickstart here: https://everett.readthedocs.org/en/v0.8/

Source code and issue tracker here: https://github.com/willkg/everett

Standup v2: the rewrite

What is Standup?

Standup is a system for capturing standup-style posts from individuals making it easier to see what's going on for teams and projects. It has an associated IRC bot standups for posting messages from IRC.

This post talks a bit about the Standup v2 rewrite. Why and how we did it and what's next.

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Standup v2: system test

What is Standup?

Standup is a system for capturing standup-style posts from individuals making it easier to see what's going on for teams and projects. It has an associated IRC bot standups for posting messages from IRC.

Join us for a Standup v2 system test!

Paul and I did a ground-up rewrite of the Standup web-app to transition from Persona to GitHub auth, release us from the shackles of the old architecture and usher in a new era for Standup and its users.

We're done with the most minimal of minimal viable products. It's missing some features that the current Standup has mostly around team management, but otherwise it's the same-ish down to the lavish shade of purple in the header that Rehan graced the site with so long ago.

If you're a Standup user, we need your help testing Standup v2 on the -stage environment before Thursday, September 22nd, 2016!

We've thrown together a GitHub issue to (ab)use as a forum for test results and working out what needs to get fixed before we push Standup v2 to production. It's got instructions that should cover everything you need to know.

Why you would want to help:

  1. You get to see Standup v2 before it rolls out and point out anything that's missing that affects you.

  2. You get a chance to discover parts of Standup you may not have known about previously.

  3. This is a chance for you to lend a hand on this community project that helps you which we're all working on in our free time.

  4. Once we get Standup v2 up, there are a bunch of things we can do with Standup that will make it more useful. Freddy is itching to fix IRC-related issues and wants https support [1]. I want to implement user API tokens, a cli and search. Paul want's to have better weekly team reports and project pages.

    There are others listed in the issue tracker and some that we never wrote down.

    We need to get over the Standup v2 hurdle first.

Why you wouldn't want to help:

  1. You're on PTO.

    Stop reading--enjoy that PTO!

  2. It's the end of the quarter and you're swamped.

    Sounds like you're short on time. Spare a minute and do something in the Short on time, but want to help anyhow? section.

  3. You're looking to stop using Standup.

    I'd love to know what you're planning to switch to. If we can meet peoples' needs with some other service, that's more free time for me and Paul.

  4. Some fourth thing I lack the imagination to think of.

    If you have some other blocker to helping, toss me an email.

Hooray for the impending Standup v2!

pyvideo last thoughts

What is pyvideo?

pyvideo.org is an index of Python-related conference and user-group videos on the Internet. Saw a session you liked and want to share it? It's likely you can find it, watch it, and share it with pyvideo.org.

This is my last update. pyvideo.org is now in new and better hands and will continue going forward.

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Anatomy of a class/function decorator and context manager

Over the weekend, I wanted to implement something that acted as both a class and function decorator, but could also be used as a context manager. I needed this flexibility for overriding configuration values making it easier to write tests. I wanted to use it in the following ways:

  1. as a function decorator:

    @config_override(DEBUG='False')
    def test_something():
        ...
    
  2. as a class decorator that would decorate all methods that start with test_:

    @config_override(DEBUG='False')
    class TestSomething:
        def test_something(self):
            ...
    
  3. as a context manager that allowed for multiple layer of overriding:

    def test_something():
        with config_override(DEBUG='False'):
            with config_override(SOMETHING_ELSE='ou812'):
                ...
    

This kind of need comes up periodically, but infrequently enough that I forget how I wrote it the last time around.

This post walks through how I structured it.

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