python - How to get the distinct value of one of my models in Google App Engine

Question

I have a model, below, and I would like to get all the distinct area values. The SQL equivalent is select distinct area from tutorials

class Tutorials(db.Model):  
    path = db.StringProperty()
    area = db.StringProperty()
    sub_area = db.StringProperty()
    title = db.StringProperty()
    content = db.BlobProperty()
    rating = db.RatingProperty()
    publishedDate = db.DateTimeProperty()
    published = db.BooleanProperty()

I know that in Python I can do

    a = ['google.com', 'livejournal.com', 'livejournal.com', 'google.com', 'stackoverflow.com']
 b = set(a)
    b
    >>> set(['livejournal.com', 'google.com', 'stackoverflow.com'])

But that would require me moving the area items out of the query into another list and then running set against the list (sounds very inefficient) and if I have a distinct item that is in position 1001 in the datastore I wouldnt see it because of the fetch limit of 1000.

I would like to get all the distinct values of area in my datastore to dump it to the screen as links.

Answer 1

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