Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Book Image

Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging

Overview of this book

Bugs are a time consuming burden during software development. Django's built-in test framework and debugging support help lessen this burden. This book will teach you quick and efficient techniques for using Django and Python tools to eradicate bugs and ensure your Django application works correctly. This book will walk you step by step through development of a complete sample Django application. You will learn how best to test and debug models, views, URL configuration, templates, and template tags. This book will help you integrate with and make use of the rich external environment of test and debugging tools for Python and Django applications. The book starts with a basic overview of testing. It will highlight areas to look out for while testing. You will learn about different kinds of tests available, and the pros and cons of each, and also details of test extensions provided by Django that simplify the task of testing Django applications. You will see an illustration of how external tools that provide even more sophisticated testing features can be integrated into Django's framework. On the debugging front, the book illustrates how to interpret the extensive debugging information provided by Django's debug error pages, and how to utilize logging and other external tools to learn what code is doing.
Table of Contents (17 chapters)
Django 1.1 Testing and Debugging
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
Preface
Index

Creating the survey application home page


It is now time to turn our attention to building some web pages for the survey application. The first page to consider is the home page, which will be the starting point for general users doing anything with surveys. Ultimately, we would likely plan for this page to have many different elements, such as a standard header and footer, also maybe a sidebar or two for news and feedback. We'd plan to develop comprehensive stylesheets to give the application a pretty and consistent appearance. But all of that is beside the point of what we want to focus on right now, which is the main content of the home page.

The primary function of the home page will be to provide a snapshot overview of the current state of surveys, and to provide links, where appropriate, to allow users to see details on individual surveys. The home page will show surveys grouped into three categories:

  • First, there will be a list of currently open surveys. Each survey in this list will...