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.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Preface

Introduction

Up until now, we have used Django to develop dynamic applications that allow users to interact with application models, but we have not attempted to secure these applications from unwanted use. For example, our Bookr app allows unauthenticated users to add reviews and upload media. This is a critical security issue for any online web app as it leaves the site open to the posting of spam or other inappropriate material and the vandalism of existing content. We want the creation and modification of content to be strictly limited to authenticated users who have registered with the site.

The authentication app supplies Django with the models for representing users, groups, and permissions. It also provides middleware, utility functions, decorators, and mixins that help integrate user authentication into our apps. Furthermore, the authentication app allows grouping and naming certain sets of users.

In Chapter 4, Introduction to Django Admin, we used the Admin app to...