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Django 2 Web Development Cookbook

Django 2 Web Development Cookbook

By : Jake Kronika, Aidas Bendoraitis
4 (6)
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Django 2 Web Development Cookbook

Django 2 Web Development Cookbook

4 (6)
By: Jake Kronika, Aidas Bendoraitis

Overview of this book

Django is a framework designed to balance rapid web development with high performance. It handles high levels of user traffic and interaction, integrates with a variety of databases, and collects and processes data in real time. This book follows a task-based approach to guide you through developing with the Django 2.1 framework, starting with setting up and configuring Docker containers and a virtual environment for your project. You'll learn how to write reusable pieces of code for your models and manage database changes. You'll work with forms and views to enter and list data, applying practical examples using templates and JavaScript together for the optimum user experience. This cookbook helps you to adjust the built-in Django administration to fit your needs and sharpen security and performance to make your web applications as robust, scalable, and dependable as possible. You'll also explore integration with Django CMS, the popular content management suite. In the final chapters, you'll learn programming and debugging tricks and discover how collecting data from different sources and providing it to others in various formats can be a breeze. By the end of the book, you'll learn how to test and deploy projects to a remote dedicated server and scale your application to meet user demands.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
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Preface
Preface
Who this book is for
What this book covers
To get the most out of this book
Sections
Get in touch
Free Chapter
1
Getting Started with Django 2.1
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Getting Started with Django 2.1
Introduction
Working with a virtual environment
Creating a virtual environment project file structure
Working with Docker
Creating a Docker project file structure
Handling project dependencies with pip
Including external dependencies in your project
Configuring settings for development, testing, staging, and production environments
Defining relative paths in the settings
Creating and including local settings
Setting up STATIC_URL dynamically for Subversion users
Setting up STATIC_URL dynamically for Git users
Setting UTF-8 as the default encoding for MySQL configuration
Setting the Subversion ignore property
Creating the Git ignore file
Deleting Python-compiled files
Respecting the import order in Python files
Creating app configuration
Defining overwritable app settings
2
Database Structure and Modeling
Database Structure and Modeling
Introduction
Using model mixins
Creating a model mixin with URL-related methods
Creating a model mixin to handle creation and modification dates
Creating a model mixin to take care of meta tags
Creating a model mixin to handle generic relations
Handling multilingual fields
Enabling schema microdata enhancements
Using migrations
Switching from South migrations to Django migrations
Changing a foreign key to the many-to-many field
3
Forms and Views
Forms and Views
Introduction
Passing HttpRequest to a form
Utilizing the save method of the form
Uploading images
Creating a form layout with custom templates
Creating a form layout with django-crispy-forms
Filtering object lists
Managing paginated lists
Composing class-based views
Generating PDF documents
Implementing a multilingual search with Haystack and Whoosh
4
Templates and JavaScript
Templates and JavaScript
Introduction
Exposing settings in JavaScript
Arranging the base.html template
Using HTML5 data attributes
Providing responsive images
Opening object details in a modal dialog
Implementing a continuous scroll
Implementing the Like widget
Uploading images via Ajax
5
Customizing Template Filters and Tags
Customizing Template Filters and Tags
Introduction
Following conventions for your own template filters and tags
Creating a template filter to show how much time has passed since a post was published
Creating a template filter to extract the first media object
Creating a template filter to humanize URLs
Creating a template tag to include a template if it exists
Creating a template tag to load a QuerySet in a template
Creating a template tag to parse content as a template
Creating a template tag to modify request query parameters
6
Model Administration
Model Administration
Introduction
Customizing columns on the change list page
Creating admin actions
Developing change list filters
Customizing default admin settings
Inserting a map into a change form
7
Security and Performance
Security and Performance
Introduction
Making forms secure from Cross Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
Implementing password validation
Downloading authorized files
Adding a dynamic watermark to images
Authenticating with Auth0
Caching the method return value
Using Memcached to cache Django views
Using Redis to cache Django views
8
Django CMS
Django CMS
Introduction
Creating templates for Django CMS
Structuring the page menu
Converting an app to a CMS app
Attaching your own navigation
Writing your own CMS plugin
Adding new fields to the CMS page
9
Hierarchical Structures
Hierarchical Structures
Introduction
Creating hierarchical categories with django-mptt
Creating a category administration interface with django-mptt-admin
Rendering categories in a template with django-mptt
Using a single selection field to choose a category in forms with django-mptt
Using a checkbox list to choose multiple categories in forms with django-mptt
Creating hierarchical categories with django-treebeard
Creating a basic category administration interface with django-treebeard
10
Importing and Exporting Data
Importing and Exporting Data
Introduction
Importing data from a local CSV file
Importing data from a local Excel file
Importing data from an external JSON file
Importing data from an external XML file
Creating filterable RSS feeds
Using Tastypie to create an API
Using Django REST framework to create an API
11
Bells and Whistles
Bells and Whistles
Introduction
Using the Django shell
Using database query expressions
Monkey patching the slugify() function for better internationalization support
Toggling the Debug Toolbar
Using ThreadLocalMiddleware
Using signals to notify administrators about new entries
Checking for missing settings
12
Testing and Deployment
Testing and Deployment
Introduction
Testing views with mock
Testing APIs created using the Django REST framework
Releasing a reusable Django app
Getting detailed error reporting via email
Deploying on Apache with mod_wsgi
Setting up cron jobs for regular tasks
13
Other Books You May Enjoy
Other Books You May Enjoy
Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Creating the Git ignore file

If you are using Git—the most popular distributed version control system—ignoring some files and folders from version control is much easier than with Subversion.

Getting ready

Make sure that your Django project is under the Git version control.

How to do it...

Using your favorite text editor, create a .gitignore file at the root of your Django project, and put the following files and directories there:

# .gitignore
# Project files and directories
/myproject/static/
/myproject/tmp/
/myproject/media/
# Byte-compiled / optimized / DLL files
__pycache__/
*.py[cod]
*$py.class
# C extensions
*.so
# PyInstaller
*.manifest
*.spec
# Installer logs
pip-log.txt
pip-delete-this-directory.txt
# Unit test / coverage reports
htmlcov/
.tox/
.coverage
.coverage.*
.cache
nosetests.xml
coverage.xml
*.cover
# Translations
*.pot
# Django stuff:
*.log
# Sphinx documentation
docs/_build/
# PyBuilder
target/

How it works...

The .gitignore file specifies patterns that should intentionally be untracked by the 
Git version control system. The .gitignore file that we created in this recipe will ignore the Python-compiled files, local settings, collected static files, temporary directory for uploads, 
and media directory with the uploaded files.

If you keep all of your settings in a config Python package, as described in the Configuring settings for development, testing, staging, and production environments recipe, add settings.py to the ignored files too.

There's more...

With Git ignore files, we have the ability to follow a whitelist pattern rather than a blacklist, which means we can indicate what files we want to include rather than those we should omit. In addition, the patterns given in .gitignore are honored for all levels of the tree below where the file resides, making them extremely powerful. For example, the file could be written in this manner for a Docker project:

# .gitignore
# ignore everything in the root by default
/*
# allow this file of course
!.gitignore
# allowed root directories
!/apps/
!/bin/
!/config/
!/data/
!/project/
!/static/
!/templates/
# allowed root files
!/Dockerfile
!/docker-compose.yml
# files allowed anywhere
!README.md
# specifically ignore certain deeper items
__pycache__/

See also

  • The Creating a virtual environment project file structure recipe
  • The Creating a Docker project file structure recipe
  • The Setting the Subversion ignore property recipe
End of Section 16
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