Advantages of Django Framework

Easy to Learn

Python is well-known as one of the easiest programming languages because it is simple, easy to read, and easy to learn. Because of its simplicity and ease of learning, many beginners choose this language as their first programming language. Python is a fairly stable language, and Django inherits many of Python's key advantages. For example, when we look at the core of Django, we see that all of the exception files and codes are written in Python. Django makes it easy to learn Django if you know how to code in Python.

Cross-Platform

Django is a portable framework whose code can run on any platform, including PC, Mac, Windows, and Linux. This framework's cross-platform nature enables developers to support all development and production environments. In addition, Django includes an ORM (object-relational mapper) layer between the developer and the database. With the help of this layer, you can migrate the entire Django project to other major databases with less code (known as Django migrations).

Community Support

Django is a free and open-source framework that can be downloaded from Github. There are nearly 2k+ contributors, with many more joining every day. A large developer community supports it, and the developers who use it constantly update the code. The Django community also introduces many new libraries to solve coding issues that developers frequently encounter while developing a project.

Built-in Admin UI

Most frameworks require you to create your Django admin interface, which takes a long time. Django provides a fully functional web interface generated automatically for each app you create. The admin site interface is well-organized, allowing developers to create/update/delete users and other database objects unique to the app. Using third-party applications and wrappers, you can customize or modify the admin panel user interface and add a dashboard.

ORM (Object-relational mapper)

Django includes a fully functional ORM that is compatible with various databases. ORM is a library that allows developers to interact with databases and automatically transfer data from databases (such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQLite database) to objects.

Django ORM example:

# gets top 5 results where score = 90 and age < 22
top_employees = Employee.objects.filter(score=90, age__lt=22)[:5]
# inserts a record with specified values
employee = Employee.objects.create(name='Khan', age=40, country='UK')
# prints name field value
print(employee.name)

The ability of Django ORM to extract data speeds up the application development process. You do not need to understand the database communication language to manipulate and store data. You can also switch between multiple relational databases with fewer lines of code.

DRY (Don't Repeat Yourself)

In programming, code reusability or adhering to the DRY principle is critical, especially when the code is updated regularly. When you follow the DRY principle, you avoid using existing and boilerplate code, bugs, and errors in the application. Django adheres to the DRY principle and is designed so that violating the DRY principle is difficult. This feature enables you to reuse existing code while focusing on the unique one. 

For example:

class Items(models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=130)
    created = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True, auto_now_add=True)
    updated = models.DateTimeField(blank=True, null=True, auto_now=True)

If you need to change the field max_length or something else in the above code, you can do so here, and the changes will be reflected automatically to all routes, validation, and the default database.

Extensive Documentation

For quick reference, good documentation for any framework or language is extremely important, particularly when we get stuck somewhere during the development phase of any Django project. If you choose Django, you will be greeted with well-organized documentation with example code, which is extremely useful when developing various real-world applications.

Installing Django

Because Django is a Python framework, you will need to download and install Python. The only difference is that you will need different installation procedures depending on whether you're downloading the most recent official release, a distribution-specific package, or the most recent development version. However, a Django framework can be globally installed easily using pip.

In the command prompt, execute the following command: 

pip install django

This will download and install Django. After the installation has been completed, you can verify your Django installation by executing the following command in the command prompt:

django-admin --version

Components of Django Web Framework

There are three major code sections on every website: input logic, business logic, and user interface logic.

The code must perform certain functions; the input data is the dataset, and the output data is how it is stored in the database. It is simply a matter of delivering the required input to the database. In contrast to other frameworks that use the MVC (Model-View-Controller) design pattern, Django uses the MTV (Model-View-template) design pattern.

MVT is a different architectural concept from MVC. The primary distinction between these two architectural patterns is that Django manages the Controller component. The template is an HTML file combined with a Django Template Language (DTL) file. Django acts as a controller, checking the URL for available resources.

If the URL maps, a view that interacts with the model and template is invoked. Django then responds to the user by sending a template. Now that we know of the architectural design pattern of Django let's look at the components that make Django.

Form

Django has a robust form library that handles form rendering as HTML. In addition, the library aids in the validation and conversion of submitted data to Python types.

Authentication

It manages user authentication, accounts, groups, and cookie-based user sessions, among other things.

Admin

The admin reads the metadata from your Django models to provide a robust interface for managing content on your site.

Internationalization

Django supports text translation into multiple languages and locale-specific formatting of dates, times, numbers, and time zones.

Security

The Django framework provides multiple safeguards against various attacks, including:

• Clickjacking
• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
• SQL injection
• Cross-site scripting
• Remote code execution

Development Best Practices

Avoiding Use of ForeignKey With unique=True

Because the OneToOneField exists in tables, there is no point in using ForeignKey with unique=True.

Using .first() Instead of .get() in Your Django Project

In Django views, you should avoid using Models.objects.get(condition) in some cases. Rather you should use Models.objects.filter(condition).first().

Those cases are when you don't want an error from the backend when the get condition is not fulfilled. Whenever you want to do something like: if the object exists → return object if the object didn't exist → return None, then you use .filter(..condition).first().

Not to mention, you can always use get_object_or_404(condition) from the web server, but this is when you need to throw 404 errors in not found situations.

Name Model Relationships Appropriately

Related name specifies the reverse relation from the parent model back to the child model. It is reasonable to indicate a related name in the plural as it returns a Queryset.

# parent model
class Supervisor(models.Model):
    pass
  
# child model
class Employee(models.Model):
    # use "employees" instead of "employee"
    supervisor = models.ForeignKey(Supervisor, related_name ='employees')

Avoiding Redundancy in Web Development Models

If it is justified, you can replace many Boolean fields with one field. Rather than having many fields such as is_available, is_expired, and is_popular, we can reduce it to one field like status. For example:

class Item(models.Model):
    is_available = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    is_expired = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    is_popular = models.BooleanField(default=False)
    ...

Can be replaced with:

class Item(models.Model):
    STATUSES = Choices('available', 'expired', 'popular')
    status = models.IntegerField(choice=STATUSES, default=STATUSES.draft)
    ...

Using a Virtual Environment

Separate library installation is an unavoidable requirement when developing Python-based applications. Because those packages are frequently updated, keeping them organized is critical. However, keeping track of every package is difficult when we're developing multiple Python class applications on the same local machine. It is not possible to use different packages for different projects. Updating a package for one project can occasionally break other project setups.

The solution to the preceding problem is to use Virtual Environments. Pipenv is the simplest solution for this problem; it's great because it's clean and uses the virtualenv package behind the scenes.

Making a Requirements.txt File 

Requirements are a list of Python packages your project uses while running, along with the version of each package. It is critical to keep your requirements.txt static files up to date to collaborate with other developers properly. When you include these static files in your code repository, you can update all of the packages installed in your virtual development environment with a single line in the terminal.

It is best practice to update the requirements.txt file before submitting code to the repository and to install the requirements.txt file after retrieving code from the repository.

Avoiding Writing Fat Views

You should write fat models and skinny views, which means you should try to write most of your logic in the model itself.

For example, if we want to send a receipt to a customer via email, we should extend the model with an email function rather than writing this logic in your controller/view. Because you can test the email logic in one place rather than repeatedly in each controller/view, your code is easier to unit test.

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