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

API patterns


This section covers some familiar design problems while working with APIs.

Pattern – human browsable interface

Problem: Visiting an API in a browser is a jarring experience, leading to poor adoption.

Solution: Use the opportunity to provide a human browsable interface to your API.

Problem details

Even though APIs are designed to be consumed by code, the initial interaction is typically by a human. A working implementation might respond with correct results if the right parameters are passed, but without proper documentation, it can be unusable.

Under-documented APIs can reduce collaboration by different teams with your application. Often, required resources such as conceptual overviews and getting started guides are not found, leading to a frustrating developer experience.

Finally, since most web APIs are initially accessed using web browsers, an ability to interact with the API within the documentation itself is very useful. Even if the documented behavior differs from the code, the...