Book Image

Django Design Patterns and Best Practices - Second Edition

By : Arun Ravindran
Book Image

Django Design Patterns and Best Practices - Second Edition

By: Arun Ravindran

Overview of this book

Building secure and maintainable web applications requires comprehensive knowledge. The second edition of this book not only sheds light on Django, but also encapsulates years of experience in the form of design patterns and best practices. Rather than sticking to GoF design patterns, the book looks at higher-level patterns. Using the latest version of Django and Python, you’ll learn about Channels and asyncio while building a solid conceptual background. The book compares design choices to help you make everyday decisions faster in a rapidly changing environment. You’ll first learn about various architectural patterns, many of which are used to build Django. You’ll start with building a fun superhero project by gathering the requirements, creating mockups, and setting up the project. Through project-guided examples, you’ll explore the Model, View, templates, workflows, and code reusability techniques. In addition to this, you’ll learn practical Python coding techniques in Django that’ll enable you to tackle problems related to complex topics such as legacy coding, data modeling, and code reusability. You’ll discover API design principles and best practices, and understand the need for asynchronous workflows. During this journey, you’ll study popular Python code testing techniques in Django, various web security threats and their countermeasures, and the monitoring and performance of your application.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)
Title Page
Copyright and Credits
PacktPub.com
Contributors
Preface
Index

Designing URLs


Django has one of the most flexible URL schemes among web frameworks. Basically, there is no implied URL scheme. You can explicitly define any URL scheme that makes sense to your users.

However, as superheroes love to say—With great power comes great responsibility. You cannot get away with a sloppy URL design anymore.

URLs used to be ugly because they were considered to be ignored by users. Back in the 90s when portals used to be popular, the common assumption was that your users will come through the front door, that is, the home page. They will navigate to the other pages of the site by clicking on links.

Search engines have changed all that. According to a 2013 research report, nearly half (47 percent) of all visits originate from a search engine. This means that any page in your website, depending on the search relevance and popularity, can be the first page your user sees. Any URL can be the front door.

More importantly, browsing 101 taught us security. Don't click on a...