Roam*notes

2025-11-03

aka yesterday

▩︎ Introducing Rootcause

Something that always made me wonder: why doesn't the IntegrityError raised by a database (driver) include some actual actionable data?

I don't know. I do know that it doesn't have to stay that way! With Rootcause you'll be able to gather all necessary information when you violate the most common types of constraints in Django.

import rootcause

try:
    ... # something violates a constraint
except IntegrityError as e:
    cause = rootcause.resolve(e, model=MyModel)
    if cause.is_check(name="max_amount"):
        raise MaxAmountExceeded()
    if cause.is_unique(name="payment_reference"):
        raise AlreadyPaid()

The goal of Rootcause is twofold: provide more information and eliminate differences between databases.

Rootcause has been tested with recent versions of SQLite, PostgreSQL and MySQL, and requires Django 5.1 or better.

Go check it out over on GitHub and fetch it from PyPI.

- #
- 11:51
- open-source
- django
- db
- rootcause
- project

💡︎ Streaming radio

One of the extremely useful snippets I discovered in Evan Hahn's Scripts I wrote that I use all the time is radio.

I cannot work in silence. I need to have something going in the background, preferably classics and not encumbered with too much chit-chat.

Instead of having a browser tab or app sitting there in the background, I adapted Evan's script. It uses mpv, so now I've got a Ghostty tab running in the background instead.

#!/usr/bin/env bash
# Check https://mytuner-radio.com/nl/radio/vrt-radio-2-limburg-402485/
set -e
set -u
set -o pipefail

if [ "$1" == joeeasy ]; then
  url='https://icecast-qmusicbe-cdp.triple-it.nl/joe_easy.aac'
elif [ "$1" == radio2 ]; then
  url='http://vrt.streamabc.net/vrt-radio2limburg-mp3-128-2845863?sABC=68s94r20#0#r7p08610r6n19o27sn00016q8n8877qs#&aw_0_1st.playerid=&amsparams=playerid:;skey:1761168928'
else
  echo "don't know $1" 1>&2
  exit 1
fi

exec mpv --really-quiet "$url"

- #
- 11:36
- scripting
- media

⚡︎ Scripts I wrote that I use all the time

Evan Hahn lists every useful script in his repertoire. I always like to see things like this pop up, just to remind myself that I don't actually optimize every single reoccuring task (yes, that's a bit of a relief).