============================================
Django 1.4 release notes - UNDER DEVELOPMENT
============================================

This page documents release notes for the as-yet-unreleased Django
1.4. As such, it's tentative and subject to change. It provides
up-to-date information for those who are following trunk.

Django 1.4 includes various `new features`_ and some minor `backwards
incompatible changes`_. There are also some features that have been dropped,
which are detailed in :doc:`our deprecation plan </internals/deprecation>`.

.. _new features: `What's new in Django 1.4`_
.. _backwards incompatible changes: backwards-incompatible-changes-1.4_

What's new in Django 1.4
========================

``SELECT FOR UPDATE`` support
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Django 1.4 now includes a :meth:`QuerySet.select_for_update()
<django.db.models.query.QuerySet.select_for_update>` method which generates a
``SELECT ... FOR UPDATE`` SQL query. This will lock rows until the end of the
transaction, meaning that other transactions cannot modify or delete rows
matched by a ``FOR UPDATE`` query.

For more details, see the documentation for
:meth:`~django.db.models.query.QuerySet.select_for_update`.

HTML5
~~~~~

We've switched the admin and other bundled templates to use the HTML5
doctype. While Django will be careful in its use of HTML5 features, to maintain
compatibility with old browsers, this change means that you can use any HTML5
features you need in admin pages without having to lose HTML validity or
override the provided templates to change the doctype.

.. _backwards-incompatible-changes-1.4:

Backwards incompatible changes in 1.4
=====================================

Compatibility with old signed data
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Django 1.3 changed the cryptographic signing mechanisms used in a number of
places in Django. While Django 1.3 kept fallbacks that would accept hashes
produced by the previous methods, these fallbacks are removed in Django 1.4.

So, if you upgrade to Django 1.4 directly from 1.2 or earlier, you may
lose/invalidate certain pieces of data that have been cryptographically signed
using an old method. To avoid this, use Django 1.3 first, for a period of time,
to allow the signed data to expire naturally. The affected parts are detailed
below, with 1) the consequences of ignoring this advice and 2) the amount of
time you need to run Django 1.3 for the data to expire or become irrelevant.

* contrib.sessions data integrity check

  * consequences: the user will be logged out, and session data will be lost.

  * time period: defined by SESSION_COOKIE_AGE.

* contrib.auth password reset hash

  * consequences: password reset links from before the upgrade will not work.

  * time period: defined by PASSWORD_RESET_TIMEOUT_DAYS.

Form related hashes — these are much shorter lifetime, and are relevant only for
the short window where a user might fill in a form generated by the pre-upgrade
Django instance, and try to submit it to the upgraded Django instance:

* contrib.comments form security hash

  * consequences: the user will see a validation error "Security hash failed".

  * time period: the amount of time you expect users to take filling out comment
    forms.

* FormWizard security hash

  * consequences: the user will see an error about the form having expired,
    and will be sent back to the first page of the wizard, losing the data
    they have inputted so far.

  * time period: the amount of time you expect users to take filling out the
    affected forms.

* CSRF check

  * Note: This is actually a Django 1.1 fallback, not Django 1.2,
    and applies only if you are upgrading from 1.1.

  * consequences: the user will see a 403 error with any CSRF protected POST
    form.

  * time period: the amount of time you expect user to take filling out
    such forms.

django.contrib.flatpages
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Starting in the 1.4 release the
:class:`~django.contrib.flatpages.middleware.FlatpageFallbackMiddleware` only
adds a trailing slash and redirects if the resulting URL refers to an existing
flatpage. For example, requesting ``/notaflatpageoravalidurl`` in a previous
version would redirect to ``/notaflatpageoravalidurl/``, which would
subsequently raise a 404. Requesting ``/notaflatpageoravalidurl`` now will
immediately raise a 404. Additionally redirects returned by flatpages are now
permanent (301 status code) to match the behaviour of the
:class:`~django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware`.
