"Django - The Easy Way (2nd Edition)" book is a practical, step-by-step guide on how to build Django websites. This repository is intended to serve as a companion to the written text.

Django is a Python based open source web development framework that has been around since 2005. It enables you to create complex database-driven websites while keeping things decoupled and dry. The Python Package Index (PyPI) hosts numerous free packages that can be used to extend projects without re-inventing the wheel. Django is used by some well-known sites like Instagram, Bitbucket and Disqus.

This book is about learning the Django web framework with simple, practical examples. It guides you through all the main concepts one at the time. We will work on many small projects rather than working on a single big application through the book. This helps digesting the information as the projects have less distracting code from previous chapters. By the end of the book you should have a solid understanding of how to build and deploy apps with Django.

This book is suitable for beginner to intermediate level web developers. You don't have to have any experience with Django or building web applications in general. We start with the very basics and increase complexity as we go along.

We use Bootstrap 4 to have a decent looking testing playground but otherwise frontend concepts are covered minimally. This is not a book about Python, HTML, CSS or JavaScript. Basic knowledge about those technologies would be helpful but is not required for the book. The focus is on the Django web framework core concepts and deployment practices.

This book is organized in 32 chapters that focus on key concepts of the framework. I recommend reading the book in sequence, starting from the very beginning and working your way to the end from there.

Chapters 1-7 cover how to install Python and use virtual environments.

In chapters 8-10 we create a simple Django project and examine the project structure. "Hello world" project introduces the reader to views, paths and templates.

Chapters 11-13 cover how the template inheritance works and how to integrate Bootstrap 4 frontend framework with Django. We also apply custom styles with CSS (Cascading Style Sheets).

Chapters 14-16 cover how to use models and interact with a database. We learn about filters and how to build a base project that can be used as a starting point for other projects. We create a detail page and learn how to work with slugs and reverse URLS.

In chapters 17-20 we learn how to categorise items with a ForeignKey field and tag items with a ManyToManyField. We do lookups through relationships, re-use templates and build a minimalistic search feature.

Chapters 21-24 show how to create forms with ModelForm. We customize the forms by changing field order and render validation errors manually. The Python interactive interpreter is used to manipulate objects and interact with Django.

Chapters 25-26 cover how to create a complete authentication system with the Allauth package and how to theme the default forms with Bootstrap 4. User authorization is managed with groups and decorators.

In chapters 27-28 we upload images and serve them from a local media folder. Bootstrap 4 is used to create a grid view to display the images. The uploaded images are compressed to thumbnails using the ImageKit package.

Chapters 29-32 show how to deploy to Heroku platform and serve static assets and user-uploaded files from an Amazon AWS bucket. We learn how to establish continuous deployment workflows with Heroku pipelines and send emails with SendGrid.

Samuli Natri has been a software developer since the 90's. He attended Helsinki University Of Technology (Computer Science) and Helsinki University (Social Sciences).

Website: https://samulinatri.com

Install GIT: https://samuli.to/Git

Clone the project:

git clone [email protected]:SamuliNatri/Django-The-Easy-Way-Source-Code.git
cd Django-The-Easy-Way-Source-Code

Install dependencies:

python3 -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt

Visit any folder and run the development server:

cd 28-Image-Thumbnails
python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Some projects contain a database with content and an admin user. Use the following credentials to login:

• username: admin
• password: admin

• The example project "29-31-Heroku" requires you to create a local_settings.py file and add ACCESS KEYS.

• The example project "32-Sending-Emails" requires you to add configuration to the settings.py file.

Follow the instructions in the book to fill in the correct configuration.