Book Image

Django: Web Development with Python

By : Aidas Bendoraitis, Samuel Dauzon, Arun Ravindran
Book Image

Django: Web Development with Python

By: Aidas Bendoraitis, Samuel Dauzon, Arun Ravindran

Overview of this book

Data science is hot right now, and the need for multitalented developers is greater than ever before. A basic grounding in building apps with a framework as minimalistic, powerful, and easy-to-learn as Django will be a useful skill to launch your career as an entrepreneur or web developer. Django is a web framework that was designed to strike a balance between rapid web development and high performance. This course will take you on a journey to become an efficient web developer thoroughly understanding the key concepts of Django framework. This learning path is divided into three modules. The course begins with basic concepts of the Django framework. The first module, Django Essentials, is like a practical guide, filled with many real-world examples to build highly effective Django web application. After getting familiar with core concepts of Django, it's time to practice your learning from the first module with the help of over 90 recipes available in this module. In the second module, Web Development with Django Cookbook, you'll learn varying complexities to help you create multilingual, responsive, and scalable websites with Django. By the end of this module, you will have a good understanding of the new features added to Django 1.8 and be an expert at web development processes.The next step is to discover the latest best practices and idioms in this rapidly evolving Django framework. This is what you'll be learning in our third module, Django Design Patterns and Best Practices. This module will teach you common design patterns to develop better Django code. By the end of the module, you will be able to leverage the Django framework to develop a fully functional web application with minimal effort.
Table of Contents (6 chapters)

What you need for this learning path

To develop with Django 1.8, you will need Python 2.7 or Python 3.4, the Pillow library for image manipulation, the MySQL database and MySQLdb bindings or PostgreSQL database, virtualenv to keep each project's Python modules separated, and Git or Subversion for version control.

The other software required for Django development are as follows:

  • PIP 1.5
  • Text editor (or a Python IDE)
  • Web browser (the latest version, please)

For Module 3, Django Design Patterns and Best Practices, it is recommend to work on a Linux-based system such as Ubuntu or Arch Linux. If you are on Windows, you can work on a Linux virtual machine using Vagrant or VirtualBox.

Certain chapters might also require installing certain Python libraries or Django packages. They will be mentioned as, say—the factory_boy package. In most cases, they can be installed using pip as follows:

$ pip install factory_boy

Hence, it is highly recommended that you first create a separate virtual environment, as mentioned in Module 3, Chapter 2, Application Design.