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I have no experience in django, and in my exploration to become a better python developer I am dipping my toe into one of the most polished and widely used web frameworks Django to so that I can better understand it and become a better python developer.

If you found this at all helpful make sure you check out the django tutorial

"An atronaut working in a lab, there is a long snake working along side, shallow depth of field beakers, test tubes, volumetric lighting, pink lighting, by victo ngai, killian eng vibrant colours, dynamic lighting, digital art" -s50 -W768 -H448 -C7.5 -Ak_lms -S2250540408

install django

The first thing I need to do is render out a template to start the project. For this I need the django-admin cli. To get this I am going the route of pipx it will be installed globally on my system in it's own virtual environment that I don't have to manage. This will be useful only for using startproject as far as I know.


pipx install django
django-admin startproject try_django
cd try_django

django-startproject

Make a venv

Once I have the project I need a venv for all of django and all of my dependencies I might need for the project. I have really been diggin hatch lately, and it has a one line "make a virtual environment and manage it for me" command.


hatch shell

trydjango-venv

If hatch is a bit bleeding edge for you, or it has died out by the time you read this. The ol trusty venv will likely stand the test of time, this is what I would use for that.


python -m .venv --prmpt `basename $PWD`
. ./.venv/bin/activate

Start the webserver

Next up we need to start the webserver to start seeing that development content. The first thing I did was run it as stated in the tutorial and find it clashed with a currently running web server port.


python manage.py runserver

django-runserver-oops

I jumped over to that tmux session, killed the process and I was up and running.

trydjango-runserver

What's running

The default django hello world looks well designed. You are first presented with this page.

trydjango-hello

Next

I opened up the urls.py to discover that the only configured url was at /admin. I tried to log in as admin, but was unable to as I have not yet created a superuser. Next time I play with django that is what I will explore.

An astronaut working in a dimly lit labratory, it is almost black, heavy dark blacks, black space, heavy vingette, hacking on a computer terminal, htop is running, shallow depth of field beakers, test tubes, by Alphonse Mucha, dynamic lighting, digital art