Book Image

Building SPAs with Django and HTML Over the Wire

By : Andros Fenollosa
5 (1)
Book Image

Building SPAs with Django and HTML Over the Wire

5 (1)
By: Andros Fenollosa

Overview of this book

The HTML over WebSockets approach simplifies single-page application (SPA) development and lets you bypass learning a JavaScript rendering framework such as React, Vue, or Angular, moving the logic to Python. This web application development book provides you with all the Django tools you need to simplify your developments with real-time results. You’ll learn state-of-the-art WebSocket techniques to realize real-time applications with minimal reliance on JavaScript. This book will also show you how to create a project with Docker from the ground up, test it, and deploy it on a server. You’ll learn how to create a project, add Docker, and discover development libraries, Django channels, and bidirectional communication, and from then, on you’ll create real projects of all kinds using HTML over WebSockets as a chat app or a blog with real-time comments. In addition, you’ll modernize your development techniques by moving from using an SSR model to creating web pages using WebSockets over HTML. With Django, you’ll be able to create SPAs with professional real-time projects where the logic is in Python. By the end of this Django book, you’ll be able to build real-time applications, as well as gaining a solid understanding of WebSockets with Django.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting Started with Python
4
Part 2: WebSockets in Django
8
Part 3: HTML over WebSockets
11
Part 4: Simplifying the frontend with Stimulus

Connecting Django to a web server

We must have a gateway service that manages the static content. We will use Caddy for its simplicity.

Caddy is configured with a flat file named Caddyfile. We must create it and add the following content:

http://hello.localhost {
    root * /usr/src/app/
 
    @notStatic {
      not path /static/* /media/*
    }
 
    reverse_proxy @notStatic django:8000
 
    file_server
}
 
http://webmail.localhost {
    reverse_proxy mailhog:8025
}

With the first line, http://hello.localhost, we indicate the domain that we will use. As we are in a development environment, we will indicate the http protocol instead of https. Next, with root * /usr/src/app/ and file_server, we’re telling Caddy to expose static files (images, CSS files, JavaScript files, and so on) because that’s not Django’...