Preface

Django is one of the most popular web frameworks in use today. It powers large websites, such as Pinterest, Instagram, Disqus, and NASA. With a few lines of code, you can rapidly build a functional and secure website that can scale to millions of users.

This book attempts to share solutions to several common design problems faced by Django developers. Sometimes, there are several solutions but we often wonder whether there is a recommended approach. Experienced developers frequently use certain idioms while deliberately avoiding certain others.

This book is a collection of such patterns and insights. It is organized into chapters each covering a key area of the framework, such as Models, or an aspect of web development, such as Debugging. The focus is on building clean, modular, and more maintainable code.

Every attempt has been made to present up-to-date information and use the latest versions. Django 1.7 comes loaded with exciting new features, such as built-in schema migrations and app reloading. Python 3.4 is the bleeding edge of the language with several new modules, such as asyncio. Both, both of which have been used here.

Superheroes are a constant theme throughout the book. Most of the code examples are about building SuperBook—a social network of superheroes. As a novel way to present the challenges of a web development project, an exciting fictional narrative has been woven into each chapter in the form of story boxes.