Chapter 8. Django!

 

This chapter covers

  • Writing web applications in Django
  • Designing a web application
  • Some common web practices, such as only editing via POST

In chapter 3, we looked at building a simple todo list to help you track what you were working on. Now we’re going to look at expanding the application and making it available through a web browser, so you can see what you need to do next regardless of where you are (as long as you have an internet connection, obviously). To make your life easier, you’re going to use a web framework called Django.

What’s a web framework, you ask? When you’re developing for the web, you need to keep track of a lot of details. In addition to displaying the HTML and handling form input, there are lots of extra bits and pieces:

  • Handling cookies, sessions, and logins
  • Detecting errors and displaying them
  • Storing data in a database
  • Separating your page design from the rest of the application (so your web designers can design the pages without having to bother you)

And so on. With a framework like Django, you can use code to handle all these things and get your web application built more quickly.

Writing web-based applications with Django

Writing your application

Using a model

Making use of your data

Final polishing

Where to from here?

Summary