Presentation on
Django
A Python framework for Web
Applications
Rishabh Shankhdhar
1801410902
Why Python?
Written in C – high performance, ability to link to C libraries
for extensions
Interpreted script language compiled on the fly into bytecode
Easier to read coding standards – whitespace sensitive
Object Oriented
Introducing…Django
“The framework for perfectionists with deadlines”
MVC
Flexible template language that can be used to generate
HTML, CSV, Email or any other format
Includes ORM that supports many databases – Postgresql,
MySQL, Oracle, SQLite
Lots of extras included – middleware, csrf protections,
sessions, caching, authentication
Django Concepts/Best Practices
DRY Principle – “Don’t Repeat Yourself”
Fat models, thin views
Keep logic in templates to a minimum
Use small, reusable “apps” (app = python module with
models, views, templates, test)
settings.py
Defines settings used by a Django application
Referenced by wsgi.py to bootstrap the project loading
Techniques for managing dev vs prod settings:
Create settings-dev.py and settings-prod.py and use symlink to
link settings.py to the correct settings
Factor out common settings into base-settings.py and import.
Use conditionals to load correct settings based on DEBUG or
other setting
Sample Settings…
DEBUG = True
TEMPLATE_DEBUG = True
ALLOWED_HOSTS = []
# Application definition
INSTALLED_APPS = (
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.messages',
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
)
Django Apps
Reusable modules
django-admin.py startapp <app_name>
Creates stub layout:
<APP_ROOT>
admin.py
models.py
templates (directory)
tests.py
views.py
urls.py
Django Models
Defined in models.py
Typically inherit from django.db.models.Model
Example Model:
from django.db import models
class TestModel(models.Model):
name = models.CharField(max_length = 20)
age = models.IntegerField()
Selecting Objects
Models include a default manager called objects
Manager methods allow selecting all or some instances
Question.objects.all()
Question.objects.get(pk = 1)
Use try block, throws DoesNotExist exception if no
match
Question.objects.filter(created_date__lt = ‘2014-01-01’)
Returns QuerySet
Quick CRUD Operations with
Generic Views
ListView
UpdateView
CreateView
If Model is specified, automagically creates a matching
ModelForm
Form will save the Model if data passes validation
Override form_valid() method to provide custom logic (i.e
sending email or setting additional fields)
Sample – As Class Based View
from .models import Question
from django.views.generic import ListView
class QuestionList(ListView):
model = Question
context_object_name = ‘questions’
Django Templates
Very simple syntax:
variables = {{variable_name}}
template tags = {%tag%}
Flexible – can be used to render html, text, csv, email, you
name it!
Dot notation – template engine attempts to resolve by
looking for matching attributes, hashes and methods
Question List Template
<!doctype html>
<html lang=en>
<head>
<meta charset=utf-8>
<title>List of Questions</title>
</head>
<body>
{%if questions%}
<ul>
{%for q in questions%}
<li>{{q.question_text}}</li>
{%endfor%}
</ul>
{%else%}
<p>No questions have been defined</p>
{%endif%}
</body>
</html>
urls.py
Defines routes to send urls to various views
Can use regular expressions
Extract parameters from a url and pass to the view as a named
parameter:
r(‘^question/(?P<question_id>\d+)/$’,’views.question_detail’)
Extensible – urls.py can include additional url files from
apps:
r(‘^question/’,include(question.urls))
Forms in Django
django.forms provides a class to build HTML forms and
validation. Example:
from django import forms
class EditQuestionForm(forms.Form):
question_text = forms.CharField(max_length = 200)
Often redundant when creating forms that work on a single
model
Request & Response
Request object encapsulate the request and provide access to a number of
attributes and methods for accessing cookies, sessions, the logged in user
object, meta data (i.e environment variables),
Response objects are returned to the browser. Can set content type,
content length, response does not have to return HTML or a rendered
template
Special response types allow for common functionality:
HttpResponeRedirect
Http404
HttpStreamingResponse
Django Extras
CRSF Middleware – enabled by default. Include template tag in all
forms:
{%csrf_token%}
Authentication
Caching
Sessions
Messages
Email
Logging
Authentication
Django’s out of the box Auth system uses database
authentication.
Changed extensively in Django 1.6 to allow custom User
objects.
AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS setting in settings.py
allows overriding how User objects are authenticated
If using the Authentication middleware and
context_processors the current user is available to code as
request.user and {{user}} is defined in all templates
Resources
Python – http://www.python.org
Django – http://www.djangoproject.com
Python Packages – https://pypi.python.org
Django Packages – https://www.djangopackages.com
Thank You
