Book Image

Web Development with Django

By : Ben Shaw, Saurabh Badhwar, Andrew Bird, Bharath Chandra K S, Chris Guest
Book Image

Web Development with Django

By: Ben Shaw, Saurabh Badhwar, Andrew Bird, Bharath Chandra K S, Chris Guest

Overview of this book

Do you want to develop reliable and secure applications which stand out from the crowd, rather than spending hours on boilerplate code? Then the Django framework is where you should begin. Often referred to as a 'batteries included' web development framework, Django comes with all the core features needed to build a standalone application. Web Development with Django takes this philosophy and equips you with the knowledge and confidence to build real-world applications using Python. Starting with the essential concepts of Django, you'll cover its major features by building a website called Bookr – a repository for book reviews. This end-to-end case study is split into a series of bitesize projects that are presented as exercises and activities, allowing you to challenge yourself in an enjoyable and attainable way. As you progress, you'll learn various practical skills, including how to serve static files to add CSS, JavaScript, and images to your application, how to implement forms to accept user input, and how to manage sessions to ensure a reliable user experience. Throughout this book, you'll cover key daily tasks that are part of the development cycle of a real-world web application. By the end of this book, you'll have the skills and confidence to creatively tackle your own ambitious projects with Django.

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Web Development with Django
Ben Shaw | Saurabh Badhwar | Andrew Bird | Bharath Chandra K S | Chris Guest
Feb, 2021 | 826 pages
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Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Preface
About the Book
1
1. Introduction to Django
1. Introduction to Django
Introduction
Scaffolding a Django Project and App
Model View Template
Summary
Free Chapter
2
2. Models and Migrations
2. Models and Migrations
Introduction
Databases
SQL CRUD Operations
Relationships
Many to Many
Django's Database CRUD Operations
Summary
3
3. URL Mapping, Views, and Templates
3. URL Mapping, Views, and Templates
Introduction
Function-Based Views
Class-Based Views
URL Configuration
Templates
Django Template Language
Summary
4
4. Introduction to Django Admin
4. Introduction to Django Admin
Introduction
Creating a Superuser Account
CRUD Operations Using the Django Admin App
Registering the Reviews Model
Customizing the Admin Interface
Summary
5
5. Serving Static Files
5. Serving Static Files
Introduction
Static File Serving
Summary
6
6. Forms
6. Forms
Introduction
What Is a Form?
The Django Forms Library
Validating Forms and Retrieving Python Values
Summary
7
7. Advanced Form Validation and Model Forms
7. Advanced Form Validation and Model Forms
Introduction
Custom Field Validation and Cleaning
Summary
8
8. Media Serving and File Uploads
8. Media Serving and File Uploads
Introduction
Settings for Media Uploads and Serving
Context Processors and Using MEDIA_URL in Templates
File Uploads Using HTML Forms
Storing Files on Model Instances
Summary
9
9. Sessions and Authentication
9. Sessions and Authentication
Introduction
Middleware
Sessions
Summary
10
10. Advanced Django Admin and Customizations
10. Advanced Django Admin and Customizations
Introduction
Customizing the Admin Site
Adding Views to the Admin Site
Summary
11
11. Advanced Templating and Class-Based Views
11. Advanced Templating and Class-Based Views
Introduction
Template Filters
Custom Template Filters
Template Tags
Django Views
Class-Based Views
Summary
12
12. Building a REST API
12. Building a REST API
Introduction
REST APIs
Serializers
ViewSets
Routers
Authentication
Summary
13
13. Generating CSV, PDF, and Other Binary Files
13. Generating CSV, PDF, and Other Binary Files
Introduction
Working with Python's CSV Module
Working with Excel Files in Python
Working with PDF Files in Python
Playing with Graphs in Python
Integrating Visualizations with Django
Summary
14
14. Testing
14. Testing
Introduction
The Importance of Testing
Automation Testing
Testing in Django
Testing Django Models
Testing Django Views
Django Request Factory
Test Case Classes in Django
Summary
15
15. Django Third-Party Libraries
15. Django Third-Party Libraries
Introduction
django-crispy-forms
Summary
16
16. Using a Frontend JavaScript Library with Django
16. Using a Frontend JavaScript Library with Django
Introduction
JavaScript Frameworks
JavaScript Introduction
Summary

Templates

In Exercise 3.01, Implementing a Simple Function-Based View, we saw how to create a view, do the URL mapping, and display a message in the browser. But if you recall, we hardcoded the HTML message Welcome to Bookr! in the view function itself and returned an HttpResponse object, as follows:

message = f"<html><h1>Welcome to Bookr!</h1> "\
"<p>{Book.objects.count()} books and counting!</p></html>"
return HttpResponse(message)

Hardcoding of HTML inside Python modules is not a good practice, because as the content to be rendered in a web page increases, so does the amount of HTML code we need to write for it. Having a lot of HTML code among Python code can make the code hard to read and maintain in the long run.

For this reason, Django templates provide us with a better way to write and manage HTML templates. Django's templates not only work with static HTML content but also dynamic HTML templates.

Django...

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