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  • in Python
  • 6 min read

Finishing Setup (with Dependabot and Pytest reporting) and Project Goals - Part 3

Using Dependabot to manage Python dependencies

All I want is to start coding. I want to learn how to write a Pyramid app the correct way and also to start learning pytest. There's just one more thing to do and one to tweak in Azure and then it's time for the fun part - the actual learning and coding.

First, I’m going to setup Dependabot to help manage my Python dependencies.

Last year I bought a Python bundle on Humble Bundle that included a one year subscription to Pyup.io. I’ve been using it for both NFLPool and MLBPool2 as it’s free for open source projects (both of those projects are licensed under a MIT license). I haven’t decided what license the content on SilverSaucer.com, but knowing me, it will probably be open source. But on the off chance it’s not, I’m going to try out Dependabot.

Github recently purchased Dependabot and made it free. Visit Dependabot, sign in with your Github profile and link which repositories you want Dependabot to help manage.

That’s it - Dependabot will keep an eye on your requirements.txt and send you Pull Requests when it finds a new version of a Python module for you to merge.

As I’ve integrated with Azure Pipelines for continuous integration, it builds the pull request and tells me if it failed or succeeded, which is nice to know before I merge it:

Dependabot Details

But of the five pull requests Dependabot created, three of the five failed to build in Azure Pipelines:

Dependabot failed builds

And it’s the exact same error as I ran into in part 2 - the builds in Python 3.6 work and they don’t in 3.7 due to some kind of (and I’m guessing) SQLAlchemy / pysqlite3 problem. (Log)

After even more troubleshooting, and if I had any hair (which I don’t, thankfully) I would have pulled it out. I finally gave up and just merged them all. It built locally and I figured future me could deal with it. And then all the builds worked again. I have no idea why. I don’t know how real developers do this stuff. But it’s working now, even with a couple smaller commits to update the README.

But when it does work, it feels great. I had updated the README, which kicked off a build, and since I hooked up Slack to Azure Pipelines, I saw this:

Azure working build

So now it’s setup just like the Test-Driven Development with Python says it should be. From Chapter 24:

“As our site grows, it takes longer and longer to run all of our functional tests. If this continues, the danger is that we’re going to stop bothering. Rather than let that happen, we can automate the running of functional tests by setting up a “Continuous Integration” or CI server. That way, in day-to-day development, we can just run the FT that we’re working on at that time, and rely on the CI server to run all the tests automatically and let us know if we’ve broken anything accidentally. The unit tests should stay fast enough that we can keep running them every few seconds.”

Excerpt From: Harry Percival. “Test-Driven Development with Python.” Apple Books.

Additional Tasks in Azure Pipelines

The Azure Pipeline docs are pretty great, including different things to configure based on the programming language you’re using.

For Python projects in Azure Pipelines, there are two tasks to add: 1. Publish Test Results 2. Publish Code Coverage

I have a feeling these will come in handy later.

I’ve only played around with the HTML report code coverage generates a couple of times. Looking at Azure DevOps, it looks kind of cool how they integrate testing into your dashboard.

In your project’s dashboard on Azure DevOps, go to Test Plans -> Runs:

Azure Test Plans / Runs

Choose which test results you want to look at it and there are pretty reports for you to view, and if you keep scrolling down on the right hand side it will give you different outcomes for review. It might save me a few clicks from the manual HTML code coverage builds, so I have that going for me.

Pytest Results

Project Goals

Now it’s finally time to start coding. I have two goals:

  1. Build a web app with the Pyramid web framework the correct way. My first two projects used a module called pyramid_handlers to manage views. This is an outdated way of writing code with Pyramid and I need to learn the modern way.
  2. Use Test Driven Development methodology to finally learn how to write tests using pytest. I’m going to write the test and then the code.

I’m not quite sure how I’m going to do this yet. I think it’s going to be a lot of jumping around a couple different Talk Python training courses. (If you have a rudimentary knowledge of Python, I highly recommend Talk Python’s training courses).

The course Building data-driven web apps with Pyramid and SQLAlchemy contains the knowledge on Pyramid and also includes a chapter on testing. The recently launched #100DaysOfWeb in Python has a bunch of chapters that will be useful in my quest, including Pyramid, Selenium, and Unit Testing Web Apps. That doesn’t even include things I want to eventually learn, like a Javascript introduction, CSS and more. (Yes, I saw the recent Jetbrains survey results and 40%+ of Python developers are using Flask for web development- but I’d like to get good at Pyramid before I switch to a different framework. And I really, really like the Pyramid community. The same could be said about my Python knowledge before diving into Javascript).

So while I’m going to kind of Frankenstein my courses, I’m going to do it using TDD. I’m not going to build a PyPI clone like Building data-driven web apps with Pyramid and SQLAlchemy teaches. Silversaucer.com is just an online playground for me to keep learning, and the first thing I’m going to build is a Randomizer for my vinyl record collection using the Discogs API. I’m going to work through the two courses above and I’ll also be using the following books to learn more about testing:

I’ll keep blogging what I learn and where I get stuck. I need to learn testing, especially if I want to continue maintaining and improving NFLPool and MLBPool2. And learning how to code is fun, in a frustrating kind of way (at times).

  • in Python
  • 2 min read

Setting up Azure Pipelines - Part 2

In Part 1, I covered the challenges I had in setting up my SSH key with Azure Pipelines to work with my existing Github repository, which contains a new Pyramid project without any customization (yet).

Now that Azure Pipelines could build my project, I spent the last week after that trying to figure out why builds would fail on Azure with Python 3.7, not with Python 3.6 or on my local development machine.

One question I was asked: Why continuous integration if I’m just a hobbyist? I have two answers:

  1. Test-Driven Development with Python by Harry Percival recommends it:

    “Rather than let that happen, we can automate the running of functional tests by setting up a “Continuous Integration” or CI server. That way, in day-to-day development, we can just run the FT that we’re working on at that time, and rely on the CI server to run all the tests automatically and let us know if we’ve broken anything accidentally. The unit tests should stay fast enough that we can keep running them every few seconds.”

    Excerpt From: Harry Percival. “Test-Driven Development with Python.” Apple Books.

  2. It’s cool. And that’s the real reason. Having the little “Azure Pipelines Succeeded” badge on the Github repo page; hooking up the Slack integration to get a message when a build builds or fails; and knowing I’m doing things like a “real” developer might.

But I digress. I set up Azure Pipelines to run two builds - one in Python 3.6 and one in Python 3.7. After I make a commit to the SilverSaucer Github repository, Azure Pipelines automatically starts a job and builds the project.

Azure Builds

Two of the four tests passed.

The good news: The two tests using Python 3.6 pass and it builds!

The bad news: The exact same two tests fail on Python 3.7. (Log)

I made sure my development machine’s version of Python matched Azure’s and upgraded from Python 3.7.1 to 3.7.3 just to make sure - still failed.

I poked at it here and there for a few days and then asked for help in the Pyramid IRC channel. Right away, I received advice to add pysqlite3 and it worked! I used pip freeze to update my requirements.txt file and made sure pysqlite3 was in there, committed, and now I have a shiny badge on my repo.

I still don’t understand why it built on Python 3.6 but not Python 3.7. But it’s working and time to move on.

Coming in part 3: Hooking up Dependabot and the Python 3.7 builds fail again.

Learning pytest using continuous integration with Azure Pipelines (or SSH key hell) - Part 1

Introduction

I’m still on my quest to learn more Python and at the top of that list is learning pytest. I just can’t wrap my head around testing and I know my two Pyramid apps aren’t “complete” until there are tests. (I did write docs, so I have that going for me).

A couple months ago I (very easily) added continuous integration to NFLPool using Microsoft’s Azure Pipelines. I, like many other people, have been blown away by the right turn Microsoft made a few years back to embrace open source, and wanted to give Azure Pipelines a try. Every time I make a commit or Pyup.io submits a pull request to update a Python package, Azure Pipelines builds NFLPool. Of course it fails, because the tests I’ve written so far fail. To end this cycle, I really need to learn how to write tests!

I have a domain I don’t use, silversaucer.com. I have a few different ideas for some projects for the domain. I’m going to build another web app using Pyramid to start, with a goal of properly using classes in Pyramid (and not Pyramid handlers) to start. I’ve also been reading Test-Driven Development with Python, 2nd Edition, that I received from a recent Humble Bundle filled with Python books.

I was thinking that this was a perfect opportunity to learn pytest. I would create a new project in Pyramid and use TDD to write my tests as I write my code. If I’m going to do that, I might as well set up continuous integration right away and pretend I’m a real developer.

Setting up Pyramid

Since I’m going to be using a Test Driven Development philosophy, all I’m going to do is create a Pyramid project and not make any changes to it yet. I used Pyramid’s cookiecutter to create the project and then committed it to my Github repository. That’s it!

Hooking up Azure Pipelines

Here is where the fun starts. I’m not going to go through this process as Microsoft has great documentation for Azure and set up.

Walk through the setup and connect to your repository on Github. Azure Pipelines will create the needed YAML file, commit it and run your first build.

Here is where my build failed for Silver Saucer. I was getting the following error:

Obtaining silversaucer from git+git@github.com:prcutler/silversaucer.git@75932f389536b59993fa780b281170849ff92238#egg=silversaucer (from -r requirements.txt (line 38)) Cloning git@github.com:prcutler/silversaucer.git (to revision 75932f389536b59993fa780b281170849ff92238) to ./src/silversaucer Running command git clone -q git@github.com:prcutler/silversaucer.git /home/vsts/work/1/s/src/silversaucer Host key verification failed. fatal: Could not read from remote repository.

Here is where I first lost hours over the course of a few days. Azure is pulling my repository using git, not https. I would compare this to my Azure Pipeline for NFLPool, which for some reason pulls my repository using https and works fine. I know a little bit about SSH keys. I’m no expert, but all of my Digital Ocean and servers at home use SSH key authentication to log in and not passwords (yay me for good opsec!) and I have my SSH key on multiple computers without any issues.

Lots of search queries later, I learned how you can change a git repository’s remote URL, but this appears just to be on your local machine. I’m sure I’m missing something simple to make it a global change, but I never figured it out.

Ok, let’s add my SSH key to Azure Pipelines. Again, Microsoft has good developer documentation on how to do this.

  • Step 1: Add your public key to your Azure profile.
  • Step 2: In your projects in Azure Pipelines, go to Pipelines -> Library and choose Secure files. Add your private key (usually id_rsa).
  • Step 3: Add the SSH Task to Azure Pipelines and make sure you authorize the private key - follow Microsoft’s developer documentation for the SSH Task. Update your YAML file:

Install SSH Key

Install an SSH key prior to a build or release

  • task: InstallSSHKey@0 inputs: hostName: sshPublicKey: #sshPassphrase: # Optional sshKeySecureFile:

The hostname input confused me at first, but here you’re going to go into your ~/.ssh directory and copy and paste the Github entry in your known_hosts file. (This is a hidden directory in your home folder on macOS or Linux. I’m not sure where it is on Windows, sorry!) Paste your public key in sshPublicKey: and the name of your private key that you uploaded in Step 2 above. If your repository is public on Github, you are not going to want to add your sshPassphrase to your YAML file.

My SSH key fails

Again, I lost hours here. I have no idea why, but the SSH key I’ve been using for the last couple of years will not work. I had to create a second SSH key for Azure Pipelines and delete my known_hosts file, clone the repository again (which then updated known_hosts) and paste in the new fingerprint from known_hosts to the YAML file. The new key works fine, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out why my normal key doesn’t work. I’ve compared the fingerprint of my usual key, used it to clone other repositories, but Azure Pipelines refuses to work with it as I would just receive the above error over and over again.

I’m not thrilled with having a second SSH key, and now I have to go to the other two computers I work with and copy it over and add it to my keyring. But it works.

What’s next

Coming up in Part 2: Pytest works in Azure Pipelines in Python 3.6 (but not Python 3.7!)

It was a good week of Python and me

It was a good week for Python and me.

In no particular order:

MLBPool2

I pushed a major re-write of MLBPool2 to production just days before the baseball season ended. Why didn’t I wait until the baseball season was over before pushing a major update? Because MySportsFeeds this summer upgraded their API from 1.x to 2.0 and it included a big change to how they track team standings, especially playoff standings. To give MLBPool2 players better visibility to how they were doing, it was important to get the update out there. There were a few more things pushed in that update which deserve their own write-up.

100 Days of Python

I started the 100 Days of Python training from Talk Python and Pybites. The first couple of days are training on the ``datetimemodule, which just reinforced to me how much more I like Pendulum. I haven’t been updating the daily log (or tweeting), but I have been working on Python daily.

Pyramid Documentation

I mentioned in my last blog post a few weeks ago how I’ve been learning about testing. One of the things I noticed when reading up on Pyramid and pytest was that the Pyramid documentation refers to pytest as py.test in its documentation, which is an old way of doing it.

GitHub and partners started Hacktoberfest this week, so it was a perfect time to go through all of the Pyramid documentation and update it. So I did, and it was a good learning opportunity. It’s not as simple as an easy search and replace - reading through the docs to make sure the changes are done right also teaches me about the features, and learning about pytest and especially coverage was great. Talking to the developers, Pyramid has a 1.10 release coming very soon, so I got those changes in and then dived into another discussion topic on IRC, cookiecutters.

With the upcoming 1.10 release, Pyramid will be merging three of it’s cookiecutters into one. Even though we’ll update the documentation, including the README, there are probably some developers who have a workflow to just pull the cookiecutter from the command line. I added a message to the two deprecated cookiecutters that they are deprecated and to use the correct one. I did spend some time going through the Talk Python course on cookiecutters, which was good, too. I was looking for a way to update the pre-commit hook to add the deprecation message, but no luck on that.

And speaking of Hacktoberfest, I met the goals! (Not that I’m done yet).

It was a good week.

Hacktoberfest 2018

There is No Offseason

Alternative title: There is No Offseason (or writing my Python apps never ends and that's ok)

The blogging might slow down some, but the coding never stops. Ok, well maybe a little. After creating and launching MLBPool2 this past spring, I took a small break and then back at it for the upcoming season of NFLPool.

I have two big goals for NFLPool before the 2018 season starts:

  1. Fix the time / timezone issue where a player tried to submit his picks before the first game of the season started to, but was denied. Rip out all references to Python’s datetime module and replace it with the Pendulum module instead.
  2. Allow NFLPool players to make changes to their picks if the season hasn’t started yet. This build on existing functionality in MLBPool2.

And a few smaller things to add including some updated admin functionality. I didn’t get to a few of the big things I wanted to do this offseason, which included unit tests and porting to MySQL. But it’s good to have goals for next offseason.

I’ll be writing about some of the changes over the few weeks leading up to this season’s kickoff.

  • in Python
  • 2 min read

Python Dev Kit Humble Bundle

Humble Bundle has done it again. They’ve released an awesome bundle of Python trainings, books and tools all for a low price and also supports charity!

Included in the bundle are three trainings from Talk Python (which I’ve already raved about a lot). I’ve been an ardent supporter of Talk Python trainings and have recommended them numerous times on the Python subreddits, and usually get comments that they’re so expensive (when compared to Udemy’s “sale prices” of $13). But they’re worth every penny and now people have a chance to get three of them for just $20.

But wait, there's more! Fluent Python, which I have not read, but is almost always one of the most highly recommended books for intermediate Python programmers and up is also included. Dan Bader’s Python Tricks book, Matt Harrison’s Illustrated Guide to Python 3 and Thoughtful Machine Learning by Matthew Kirk are also included. I’m personally excited to get Matt Harrison’s book - Talk Python launched a new training this week and if you buy it within the first week that book is included. I’m going to buy the Talk Python Everything Bundle in a month, so I would have missed out on the promo to get the book, but now I get it anyway!

You also can get a number of software tools. A 1 year subscription of Postman Pro is included - I’ve used the free version since Talk Python introduced it to me. It’s been fantastic for learning the MySportsFeeds API and looking through rows and rows of JSON. I’m curious to see what the Pro version brings. GitKracken looks interesting, but PyUp is one I really want to try out.

Last, but not least, is a 6 month subscription to egghead.io, featuring video tutorials to learn JavaScript. I wanted to get better at Python before learning JavaScript, but this makes starting to learn it a no-brainer.

Even though I have two of the three Talk Python trainings in the bundle, a PyCharm Pro license and am an existing DigitalOcean customer, it’s still an unbelievable deal. Go get it now! (Not an affiliate link).

  • in Python
  • 2 min read

Password Validation in NFLPool and MLBPool2

When I first learned to work with Pyramid thanks to the Talk Python course Python for Entrepreneurs, I used the account registration system directly from the course for NFLPool. When I wrote MLBPool2, I augmented it to require the user to use a much stronger password than the course taught. (You can see the original code from NFLPool here).

In MLBPool2, I required the user to use a password between 8 and 24 characters and it must have at least one lowercase letter, at least one upper case letter, a number, and a symbol:

A nice error message is shown each time the user doesn’t do it correctly. I was pretty proud of myself for figuring this out (and for using Stack Overflow to get some tips on how to do it).

But…. It hit me a couple weeks ago that it works great for user registration, but if they lose their password or want to reset it, none of that functionality is there. When resetting a password, the user clicks the reset password link which emails them a one-time link to reset their password. And none of the password requirements I was so proud of are in the methods for resetting a password.

It’s going to require a big re-write - right now it only has one input field for the new password. I’ll need to add a second field to require the user to enter the new password twice (similar to registration) and then add all of the requirements and the error messages to the viewmodel. So I’ll be working on that over the next week or so.

  • in Python
  • 3 min read

NFLPool - The Work Continues

For once in my life, I’m not procrastinating. With the NFL season just over four and a half months away, I’ve already started on working to update NFLPool.

I’m really enjoying working with Python and don’t want to let the few things I’ve learned get rusty. This includes back porting a number of updates from MLBPool2.

I've updated the Standings page to display all seasons played (before it defaulted to just the current season). This uses traversal in Pyramid to create a GET request based on the season year and automatically creates the links. This feature within Pyramid is so cool, I guess I should expand on it:

I have a standings_controller.py that creates all of the routes for the pages in Standings:

I call the StandingsService to get a list of all the seasons that exist in the database to create the index page and it shows a bullet list of each season. (Currently, this returns the one season that has been played, 2017). You can see it in action here.

You can then click on the 2017 bullet to see the player standings for the 2017 season. The code for the player standings in each season looks like:

The cool thing is season = self.request.matchdict['id'] above - when the user clicks on 2017, that’s passed to this method, that passes 2017 and makes season equal to whatever bullet the user clicked on in the list on the Standings index page, which is 2017 in this example and returns the 2017 Standings. The rest of the code passes the season variable (which is now 2017) to the database to show all of the players and their score for the 2017 season. I also updated the template that if the week is 17 or greater (there are only 17 weeks in an NFL season), the header on the page now says 2017 Final Standings, otherwise it would return 2017 Week x Standings, where x is equal to whatever week the standings have been updated through. This was helpful as last year there was an issue with how division standings were pulled from MySportsFeeds because they don’t calculate the tiebreakers in their API and they had to fix it - after they fixed it, I updated the stats from their API, but now it was “Week 18”, which technically doesn’t exist in the NFL. Now it just says final.

I also added Slack messaging that is present in MLBPool2. When a new user registers or submits their picks, I get a message in my NFLPool Slack channel.

A minor thing, but when players are selecting the NFL player they think will win in a category (such as who has the most passing yards), the dropdown box that shows a list of all NFL players now includes the player’s team and position in addition to the player’s name. Another small thing is the site administrator can update when a player has paid the annual league fee and when the admin updates to a new season the list players who have paid is reset.

Last, but not least, I’ve been working on documentation. I had already written the User Guide on how to play and make your picks, and over the last week I’ve added an Administrator’s Guide, including how to install, first time setup, how to update to a new season and how to manage NFLPool players. This is all written in reStructured Text and uses Sphinx to create the documentation and is hosted on ReadTheDocs. I still need to write the developer documentation - I have no idea how to write developer docs and am still looking for some good examples of developer documentation to crib from.

It’s a good thing I’m using Github’s issue tracker - a couple of those fixes above I had added last September after NFLPool launched and probably would have forgotten about. Between that and the documentation, it’s almost like I’m running a real open source project!

The work doesn’t end there, though. The big one I need to add the TimeService and GamedayService to make datetime management easier, especially for calculating when picks are due and displaying it on the pick submission page. I also have a couple of more bug fixes to get to and I’d like to add Twitter support to the app as well. The journey never ends.

  • in Blog
  • 2 min read

Goodbye Wordpress, Hello Hugo

I’ve been using Wordpressfor over 15 years. In fact, I started blogging before Wordpress existed, and even used b2 / cafelog, from which Wordpress was forked.

But over the last couple of years as I’ve maintained three separate Wordpress sites (the first for paulcutler.org, then Stone Open, and later MLBPool2 (which is now using Pyramid instead), I’ve had constant crashes and memory issues. I don’t know if it’s because of the number of blog posts I have, but both my personal blog and Stone Open have tables corrupted and I have to go in and fix them whenever the site crashes.

That, combined with the constant updates for Wordpress and it’s plugins, as well as security fixes, made me say enough is enough.

I’ve been looking at Hugo (written in Go) for the last month or so to replace Wordpress with. I also looked briefly looked at Jekyll and Pelican, which are also both static site generators. Pelican interested me, as it is written in Python, but Hugo seems to be a bit more actively maintained.

As of this morning, paulcutler.org is now running Hugo. I updated the web server, installed a new SSL certificate (thanks Let’s Encrypt!) and moved it to my other DigitalOcean droplet that serves MLBPool2.com and NFLPool.xyz.

One of the advantages of using Hugo is that all of the blog posts are written with Markdown. I’ve been using Markdown more and more, as most of the daily apps I use on macOS use Markdown (Day One, Bear Notes, and Ulysses (which I’m using to write this now with).

I’m a little worried I’m going to lose some Google search magic for the old URLs, but we’ll see. I also need to see if this theme I’m using has search functionality to use. The site should be faster now as there is no database in the middle and I’m just serving static HTML pages. I’m sure I’ll continue to tweak it over time as I learn more about Hugo. Now to get automated deployment working!

  • in Python
  • 3 min read

MLBPool2 – Letting a Player Change their Picks

I’ve been blogging a little bit about MLBPool2 the last couple of weeks and now the last three months of work is complete.

I already touched on two of the biggest differences between NFLPool and MLBPool2 (the time service using Pendulum and using MySQL / MariaDB instead of SQLite).

The biggest difference between NFLPool and MLBPool2 though is players have the ability to change their picks. At the All-Star Break, MLBPool2 players can change up to 14 of their 37 picks, but those changes are only worth half points.

This required a major re-write in the way I capture and store each player’s picks. I also figured, based on how NFLPool went when I launched it, if a player was going to be able to change their picks at the All-Star Break, I might as well let them change their picks before the season starts. (I had a couple NFLPool players request to make a change, which required me to delete all their picks from the database and I just told them to do it again. But I hate touching the database.). I wrote a new service (gameday_service.py) that the app uses to figure out a few different things:

  • Season start
  • When picks are due
  • The All-Star Break (48 hours before and after the All-Star Game)
  • Season end

I already was using two methods and one for the initial picks submission and one for changes in the PlayerPicks service. If the player was changing their picks, I used an if / else statement that compared the current time to when the season started:

now_time = TimeService.get_time()

if GameDayService.season_opener_date() > now_time:
"""Update the picks passed from change-picks. If the season start date is later than the current time,
make the new changed picks equal to the original picks, making original_pick equal to the new pick."""

Update Pick Type 1
Update the AL East Winner Pick - check to see if it has been changed
if al_east_winner_pick != session.query(PlayerPicks).filter(PlayerPicks.user_id == user_id) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.season == season) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.pick_type == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.rank == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.league_id == 0) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.division_id == 1):
session.query(PlayerPicks).filter(PlayerPicks.user_id == user_id).filter(PlayerPicks.pick_type == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.season == season) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.rank == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.league_id == 0) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.division_id == 1) \
.update({"team_id": al_east_winner_pick, "date_submitted": now_time,
"original_pick": al_east_winner_pick})

And do a session.update to update the database.

But if it’s during the All-Star Break we need to capture that the pick has been changed (changing the value in the PlayerPicks table from 0 to 1) where the UniquePicks service will credit the player with half points:

else:
"""If the season has started, update picks at the All-Star Break. Do not change the original pick column
and update the changed column to 1."""

Update the AL East Winner Pick
for pick in session.query(PlayerPicks.team_id).filter(PlayerPicks.user_id == user_id) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.season == season) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.pick_type == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.rank == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.league_id == 0) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.division_id == 1).first():

if pick != int(al_east_winner_pick):
session.query(PlayerPicks).filter(PlayerPicks.user_id == user_id) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.pick_type == 1) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.rank == 1).filter(PlayerPicks.league_id == 0) \
.filter(PlayerPicks.division_id == 1) \
.update({"team_id": al_east_winner_pick, "date_submitted": now_time, "changed": 1, "multiplier": 1})

When the change picks form is submitted, all 37 picks are sent from the form to the POST and viewmodel. In the controller, I checked if the number of changes was greater than 14 and would redirect them to an error page. But if there were 14 or less changes, the above code would run. If the new pick was not equal to the pick stored in the database, we’d update the pick, capture the time the player submitted changes and flag that the pick was changed. The code works, but there are 36 blocks like the one above and I couldn’t figure out a method that would work where I could pass it parameters. (36, not 37 as the tiebreaker pick can never be changed). But the key is that it works.

The multiplier is reset to 1 and if their original pick had qualified for the double points bonus, it needs to reset back to one as the UniquePicks service is re-run after the All-Star Break and then will assign a multiplier of 2 if the new pick qualifies for the double points bonus.

I plan on porting the code to allow a player to change their picks before the season starts to NFLPool to make the player’s life easier. But really, it’s to make mine easier as I don’t want to have to manually delete their picks from the database.