Django

What is Django?

Django is a high-level Python web framework that enables rapid development of secure and maintainable websites. Built by experienced developers, Django takes care of much of the hassle of web development, so you can focus on writing your app without needing to reinvent the wheel.

Setting Up a Django Project

Setting up a Django project involves installing Django, setting up a virtual environment, and creating a new Django project with Django's command-line utility.

$ pip install django
$ django-admin startproject mysite

Creating Models

A model in Django is a special kind of object – it is saved in the database. A model is a Python class that subclasses django.db.models.Model in which each attribute represents a database field.

from django.db import models

class Blog(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')

Django Admin

Django provides a built-in admin module which can be used to perform CRUD operations on the models.

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Blog

admin.site.register(Blog)

Creating Views

A view function, or view for short, is a Python function that takes a web request and returns a web response. This response can be the HTML contents of a document, a redirect, a 404 error, an XML document, an image... or anything.

from django.http import HttpResponse

def hello(request):
    return HttpResponse('Hello, World!')

URL Mapping

URLconfs have a hook to make URLs for models. This lets you wire a model’s methods into your URLconf without any redundancy.

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('hello/', views.hello),
]

Creating Templates

Django’s template language is designed to strike a balance between power and ease. It’s designed to feel comfortable to those used to working with HTML.

{% extends 'base_generic.html' %}

{% block content %}
<h2>Blog</h2>
{% endblock %}

Managing Static Files

Django provides django.contrib.staticfiles to help you manage them. This app collects static files from each of your applications (and any other places you specify) into a single location that can easily be served in production.

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

Working with Forms

Handling forms is a complex business. Consider Django’s admin, where numerous items of data of several different types may need to be prepared for display in a form, rendered as HTML, edited using a convenient interface, returned to the server, validated and cleaned up, and then saved or passed on for further processing.

from django import forms

class NameForm(forms.Form):
    your_name = forms.CharField(label='Your name', max_length=100)

Class-Based Views

Class-based views provide an alternative way to implement views as Python objects instead of functions. They are organized around the notion of components, standalone pieces of code that can be reused in a different context through inheritance.

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.views import View

class MyView(View):
    def get(self, request):
        return HttpResponse('Hello, World!')