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

Chapter 3: Adding WebSockets to Django

Channels is a Django extension that allows us to use protocols other than HTTP. The Django team, knowing the existing limitations of including other protocols, had to create a new server called Daphne that is natively compatible with the Asynchronous Server Gateway Interface (ASGI), an update of the Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI). Without Channels, it would be impossible to have the WebSockets protocol.

You may wonder why the migration from WSGI to ASGI is so important. First, we need to understand what communication interfaces are. When we want to serve a Python site, be it Django or any other framework, we need to run software capable of keeping an instance active and mediating with any web server that makes requests. There are many interfaces for a web server to understand Python, but the most recommended is the WSGI specification, a Python standard for communication between a web server (Apache, Nginx, Caddy, etc.) and any Python web...