Understand Django

Understand Django is a series of articles focused on learning the Django web framework to build web applications with Python.

The articles build on each other to increase your understanding of how to use Django. The series explains how Django works. If you’re new to Django, you can start from the beginning. The articles assume you have little or no prior knowledge of doing web development.

  1. From Browser To Django
  2. URLs Lead The Way
  3. Views On Views
  4. Templates For User Interfaces
  5. User Interaction With Forms
  6. Store Data With Models
  7. Administer All The Things
  8. Anatomy Of An Application
  9. User Authentication
  10. Middleware Do You Go?
  11. Serving Static Files
  12. Test Your Apps
  13. Deploy A Site Live
  14. Per-visitor Data With Sessions
  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #sessions

Per-visitor Data With Sessions

How does Django know when a user is logged in? Where can the framework store data for a visitor on your app? In this article, we’ll answer those questions and look at a storage concept in Django called sessions.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #deployment

Deploy A Site Live

You’re ready to take the site you developed and share it with the world. What steps should you take to prepare your Django project for life on the web? That’s the focus of this article.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #tests

Test Your Apps

How do you confirm that your website works? You could click around and check things out yourself, or you can write code to verify the site. I’ll show you why you should prefer the latter. In this Understand Django article, we’ll study automated tests to verify the correctness of your site.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #static

Serving Static Files

In this Understand Django article, we’ll examine static files. Static files are critical to apps, but have little to do with Python code. We’ll see what they are and what they do.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #middleware

Middleware Do You Go?

The topic for this Understand Django article is middleware. We’ll see what middleware is, what it is used for in a Django project, and how to write your own.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #authentication
  • #authorization

User Authentication

Our focus in this Understand Django article is how to manage users in your Django application. We’ll study Django’s built-in user authentication system.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #applications

Anatomy Of An Application

This article explores applications. Applications are core structural elements of a Django project. We will see the composition of an app and how to use them effectively.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #admin

Administer All The Things

This article will look at how maintainers of an application can manage their data through Django’s built-in administrative tools. We will see how to build admin pages and customize the admin tools to help teams navigate their apps.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #models

Store Data With Models

In this article, we will see how to store data into a database with Django models. The article covers how models act as an interface to let your application store and fetch data.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #forms

User Interaction With Forms

How do users provide data to your website so you can interact with them? We can answer that question by exploring Django’s form system, and the tools that Django provides to simplify your site as you engage with your users.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #templates

Templates For User Interfaces

When your Django application sends back a response with your user interface, templates are the tool you’ll use to produce that user interface. This article looks at what templates are and how to use them.

  • #Python
  • #Django
  • #views

Views On Views

Django URLs expect to send a response back to a user. Where does that response come from? A Django view! This article looks into the fundamentals of views and how to use them in your project.

  • #Python
  • #Django

URLs Lead The Way

How does a Django site know where to send requests? You have to tell it! In this next article in the Understand Django series, we look at URLs and how to let your users get to the right place.

  • #Python
  • #Django

From Browser To Django

Django helps you build websites in Python. How does it work? In this series, we’ll explore Django from top to bottom to show you how to build the website you’ve wanted. We’ll start from the beginning with the browser.