Reorganize the beta release notes a bit and trim down the section on feeds.

updated features in Django between 1.1 and 1.2 alpha.

What's new in 1.2 beta

======================

Deprecations and other changes in 1.2 beta

==========================================

This 1.2 beta release marks the final feature freeze for Django 1.2;

while most feature development was completed for 1.2 alpha (which

constituted a freeze on major features), a few other new features were

added afterward and so are new as of 1.2 beta.

This beta release deprecates one portion of public API, and introduces

a potentially backwards-incompatible change to another. Under `our API

stability policy <misc-api-stability>`, deprecation proceeds over

multiple release cycles: initially, the deprecated API will raise

``PendingDeprecationWarning``, followed by raising

``DeprecationWarning`` in the following release, and finally removal

of the deprecated API. APIs beginning the deprecation process in

Django 1.2 will be removed in the Django 1.4 release.

Additionally, some existing APIs have been deprecated; under `our API

stability policy <misc-api-stability>`, these APIs will continue to

work for now, but will raise ``PendingDeprecationWarning`` in Django

1.2 and ``DeprecationWarning`` in Django 1.3, before being removed in

Django 1.4.

Class-based test runners

------------------------

Unit test runners

-----------------

Django 1.2 changes the test runner tools to use a class-based

approach. Old style function-based test runners will still work, but

<topics-testing-test_runner>`.

``Feed`` in ``django.contrib.syndication.feeds``

------------------------------------------------

Syndication feeds

-----------------

The :class:`django.contrib.syndication.feeds.Feed` class is being

replaced by the :class:`django.contrib.syndication.views.Feed` class.

The old ``feeds.Feed`` class is deprecated, and will be removed in

Django 1.4.

The new class has an almost identical API, but allows instances to be

used as views. For example, consider the use of the old framework in

the following :ref:`URLconf <topics-http-urls>`::

    from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

    from myproject.feeds import LatestEntries, LatestEntriesByCategory

    feeds = {

        'latest': LatestEntries,

        'categories': LatestEntriesByCategory,

    }

    urlpatterns = patterns('',

        # ...

        (r'^feeds/(?P<url>.*)/$', 'django.contrib.syndication.views.feed',

            {'feed_dict': feeds}),

        # ...

    )

Using the new Feed class, these feeds can be deployed directly as views::

    from django.conf.urls.defaults import *

    from myproject.feeds import LatestEntries, LatestEntriesByCategory

    urlpatterns = patterns('',

        # ...

        (r'^feeds/latest/$', LatestEntries()),

        (r'^feeds/categories/(?P<category_id>\d+)/$', LatestEntriesByCategory()),

        # ...

    )

If you currently use the ``feed()`` view, the ``LatestEntries`` class

would not need to be modified apart from subclassing the new

:class:`~django.contrib.syndication.views.Feed` class.

However, ``LatestEntriesByCategory`` uses the ``get_object()`` method

with the ``bits`` argument to specify a specific category to show. In

the new :class:`~django.contrib.syndication.views.Feed` class,

``get_object()`` method takes a ``request`` and arguments from the

URL, so it would look like this::

    from django.contrib.syndication.views import Feed

    from django.shortcuts import get_object_or_404

    from myproject.models import Category

    class LatestEntriesByCategory(Feed):

        def get_object(self, request, category_id):

            return get_object_or_404(Category, id=category_id)

        # ...

Additionally, the ``get_feed()`` method on ``Feed`` classes now take

different arguments, which may impact you if you use the ``Feed``

classes directly. Instead of just taking an optional ``url`` argument,

it now takes two arguments: the object returned by its own

``get_object()`` method, and the current ``request`` object.

To take into account ``Feed`` classes not being initialized for each

request, the ``__init__()`` method now takes no arguments by default.

Previously it would have taken the ``slug`` from the URL and the

``request`` object.

In accordance with `RSS best practices`_, RSS feeds will now include

an ``atom:link`` element. You may need to update your tests to take

this into account.

The old ``feeds.Feed`` class is deprecated. The new class has an

almost identical API, but allows instances to be used as views.

Also, in accordance with `RSS best practices`_, RSS feeds will now

include an ``atom:link`` element. You may need to update your tests to

take this into account.

For more information, see the full :ref:`syndication framework

documentation <ref-contrib-syndication>`.

---------------

Due to cookie-handling bugs in Internet Explorer, Safari, and possibly

other browsers, our encoding of cookie values was changed so that the

characters comma (',') and semi-colon (';') are treated as non-safe

characters, and are therefore encoded as ``\054`` and ``\073``

respectively. This could produce backwards incompatibilities if you

are relying on the ability to set these characters directly in cookie

values.

other browsers, Django's encoding of cookie values was changed so that

the characters comma (',') and semi-colon (';') are treated as

non-safe characters, and are therefore encoded as ``\054`` and

``\073`` respectively. This could produce backwards incompatibilities

if you are relying on the ability to set these characters directly in

cookie values.

What's new in 1.2 beta

======================

This 1.2 beta release marks the final feature freeze for Django 1.2;

while most feature development was completed for 1.2 alpha (which

constituted a freeze on major features), a few other new features were

added afterward and so are new as of 1.2 beta.

Object-level permissions

:ref:`authentication docs <topics-auth>` for more details.

``select_related()`` improvements

---------------------------------

The ``select_related()`` method of ``QuerySet`` now accepts the

``related_name`` of a reverse one-to-one relation in the list of

fields to select. One-to-one relations will not, however, be traversed

by a depth-based ``select_related()`` call.

The Django 1.2 roadmap

======================