Introducing Django

What is Django? Features References Introducing Django Horst Gutmann September 30, 2007 1 / 34

What is Django? Features References Disclaimer I’m not of the developers of Django but merely a user who likes what he’s seen. My experience is limited to small sites that can be comfortably run on a shared host such as Dreamhost. And I want to apologize for the noise my laptop is probably going to make during the presentation ;-) 2 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References What is Django? Django is a high-level Python Web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. [1] Model-View-Controller for the Web Written in Python Explicit instead of implicit Developed for the Lawrence Journal-World1 newspaper in Kansas 1 http://www2.ljworld.com/ 3 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References What is an MVC web framework? Abstraction 5 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Abstract HTTP Do we really want to manually parse HTTP requests? Frameworks should automate things like header creation Allow easy cookie handling 6 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Abstract database calls Page . o b j e c t s . g e t ( i d =10) instead of SELECT ∗ FROM page WHERE i d =10; Not to mention keeping it backend independent and mapping the resultset to objects in the used programming language. 8 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Dispatch URLs URLs or URL patterns should be mapped to functions or objects ... that then create the output. u r l p a t t e r n s += p a t t e r n s ( ’ ’ , u r l ( ’ ˆ$ ’ , ’ v i e w s . i n d e x ’ ) , ) 10 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References MVC or MVT? Django uses a little bit different naming for the Model-View-Controller pattern. Models abstract the used data by defining classes for them and storing them in relational tables. Views take the job of the controllers in MVC and basically define, what the user gets to see. Functions, not classes here. Templates define how the users see the view 11 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Projects and Applications Project A project is for example your whole website. Here you store your central conﬁguration and general templates and images (just as an example). Applications are where you store the actual functionality. For example a weblog would be an application. An account system would be an application ... Applications are a simple way to share common functionality between various projects. 12 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Easy start Python2 (ideally 2.5 since sqlite is bundled with it) a text editor This is all you need to start developing with Django since Django comes with its own lightweight webserver to make it very easy for everyone to start playing around with it. 2 http://www.python.org 13 / 34

What is Django? General Features What do you need? References Yet ﬂexible SQLite FastCGI MySQL mod python PostgreSQL mod wsgi Oracle in preparation 14 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Main features (for me) A good collection of contributed applications Administration interface Authentication system Comments system ... Template language focused on inheritance Simple form processing No magic 15 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Administration interface I 16 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Administration interface II Available in django.contrib.admin Configured through model definitions Configurable using templates (possible per model), JavaScripts and CSS Currently a rewrite using newforms is in the pipe. 17 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Authentication system3 django.contrib.auth Just hook it in, and you get a login screen ... and usergroups ... and custom permissions 3 http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/authentication/ 18 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing django-registration5 By James Bennett4 Oﬀers all you really need: Simple registration form E-mail activation Works with django.contrib.auth 4 http://www.b-list.org/about/ 5 http://code.google.com/p/django-registration/ 19 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing The Template Language Very restrictive ... to keep application logic within the View and the Model Don’t let templates change the state of your site! If you want to have complex code in your templates, you have to deﬁne your own template tags in Python. Inheritance between templates You have to pass variables explicitly to the template from the view 20 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Template Basics Variables Rendered with {{ variable_name }} Tags allow you to do more sophisticated stuﬀ while keeping the actual Python code out of the template: {% template_tag %} Even conditional blocks are realized as tags. Filters allow you to manipulate the output of a variable: {{ variable|filter }} E.g.: Escaping strings, converting from Markdown to HTML, ... 22 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Template Inheritance6 The core of inheritance are blocks the templates. base.html index.html <html> {% extends ’base.html’ %} <body> {% block title %} <h1> Index page {% block title %} {% endblock %} {% endblock %} {% block content %} </h1> ... <div id=\"content\"> {% endblock %} {% block content %} {% endblock %} </div> </body> </html> 6 http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/templates/ #template-inheritance 24 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing newforms7 ”newforms” because there was something before that ... let’s ignore the only form processing for now ;-) Easy way to deﬁne forms ... to render them ... and to validate their data Easily combinable with models (as you will see in the demoapp) 7 http://www.djangoproject.com/documentation/newforms/ 25 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Form deﬁnition from d j a n g o import newforms a s f o r m s c l a s s CommentForm ( m o d e l s . Form ) : a u t h o r = form . C h a r F i e l d ( ’ Your name ’ ) e m a i l = form . E m a i l F i e l d ( ’ Your e−m a i l ) body = form . C h a r F i e l d ( ’ Comment ’ , w i d g e t=f o r m s . T e x t a r e a ( ) ) 27 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Form output {{ form . a s p }} Results in: <p> a b e l f o r=” i d a u t h o r ”>Your name :</ l a b e l> <l <i n p u t i d=” i d a u t h o r ” t y p e=” t e x t ” name=” a u t h o r ” m a x l e n g t h=” 100 ” /></p> <p> a b e l f o r=” i d e m a i l ”>Your e−m a i l :</ l a b e l> <l <i n p u t i d=” i d e m a i l ” t y p e=” t e x t ” name=” e m a i l ” m a x l e n g t h=” 75 ” /> </p> <p> a b e l f o r=” i d b o d y ”>Comment :</ l a b e l> <l <t e x t a r e a i d=” i d b o d y ” rows=” 10 ” c o l s=” 40 ” name=” body ”> t e x t a r e a> </ </p> 29 / 34

What is Django? Contributed apps Features The Template Language References Simple Form Processing Form data validation Everything is done in Python, so it’s easily re-usable. c l a s s CommentForm ( f o r m s . Form ) : # ... def c l e a n e m a i l ( s e l f ) : e m a i l = s e l f . c l e a n e d d a t a [ ” e m a i l ” ] . s p l i t ( ”@” ) [ 1 ] i f e m a i l i n [ ” h o t m a i l . com” , ” yahoo . com” ] : r a i s e V a l i d a t i o n E r r o r , ” Get a GMail a c c o u n t ! ” 31 / 34

What is Django? Features References “Django project site.” [Online]. Available: http://www.djangoproject.com/ 32 / 34

What is Django? Features References Thank you for your attention. Any last question? 33 / 34

What is Django? Features References Want to get some action? If you liked what you saw, we could meet somewhere and build a little website together :-) 34 / 34

Introducing Django

0 comments

Notes on slide 1

2 Favorites