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Django Design Patterns and Best Practices
Django Design Patterns and Best Practices

Django Design Patterns and Best Practices: Industry-standard web development techniques and solutions using Python , Second Edition

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Django Design Patterns and Best Practices

Application Design

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

  • Gathering requirements
  • Creating a concept document
  • HTML mockups
  • How to divide a project into apps
  • Whether to write a new app or reuse an existing one
  • Best practices before starting a project
  • Why Python 3?
  • Which Django version to use
  • Starting the SuperBook project

Many novice developers approach a new project by beginning to write code right away. More often than not, it leads to incorrect assumptions, unused features, and lost time. Spending some time with your client in understanding core requirements, even in a project short on time, can yield incredible results. Managing requirements is a key skill worth learning.

How to gather requirements?

"Innovation is not about saying yes to everything. It's about saying NO to all but the most crucial features."                                                                                                                                   
– Steve Jobs

I have saved several doomed projects by spending a few days with the client to carefully listen to their needs and set the right expectations. Armed with nothing but a pencil and paper (or their digital equivalents), the process is incredibly simple, but...

Are you a storyteller?

So what is this one-page write-up? It is a simple document that explains how it feels to use the site. In almost all the projects I have worked with, when someone new joins the team, they will be quickly discouraged if asked to go through every bit of paperwork. But they will be thrilled if they find a single-page document that quickly tells them what the site is meant to be.

You can call this document whatever you like—concept document, market requirements document, customer experience documentation, or even an Epic Fragile StoryLog™ (patent pending). It really doesn't matter.

The document should focus on the user experience rather than technical or implementation details. Make it short and interesting to read. In fact, Joel Spolsky's rule number one on documenting requirements is funny.

If possible, write about a typical user (persona...

HTML mockups

In the early days of building web applications, tools such as Photoshop and Flash were used extensively to get pixel-perfect mockups. They are hardly recommended or used anymore.

Giving a native and consistent experience across mobiles, tablets, laptops, and other platforms is now considered more important than getting that pixel-perfect look. In fact, most web designers directly create layouts on HTML.

Creating an HTML mockup is a lot faster and easier than ever before. If your web designer is unavailable, developers can use a CSS framework such as Bootstrap or ZURB Foundation framework to create pretty decent mockups.

The goal of creating a mockup is to create a realistic preview of the website. It should not merely focus on details and polish to look closer to the final product compared to a sketch, but add interactivity as well. Make your static HTML come to life...

Designing the application

When you have a fairly good idea of what you need to build, you can start thinking about the implementation in Django. Once again, it is tempting to start coding away. However, when you spend a few minutes thinking about the design, you can find plenty of different ways to solve a design problem.

You can also start designing tests first, as advocated in the Test-driven Development (TDD) methodology. We will see more of the TDD approach in Chapter 11: Testing and Debugging.

Whichever approach you take, it is best to stop and think:

  • What are the different ways in which I can implement this?
  • What are the trade-offs?
  • Which factors are more important in our context?
  • Finally, which approach is the best?

The best designs are often elegant and harmonious as a whole. This is usually where design patterns can help you. Well-designed code is not...

Best practices before starting a project

While preparing a development environment, make sure that you have the following in place:

  • A fresh Python virtual environment: Python 3 includes the venv module or you can install virtualenv. Both of them prevent polluting your global Python library. pipenv is the recommended tool (used in this book as well) for higher-level management of virtual environments and dependencies.
  • Version control: Always use a version control tool such as Git or Mercurial. They are lifesavers. You can also make changes much more confidently and fearlessly.
  • Choose a project template: Django's default project template is not the only option. Based on your needs, try other templates such as Edge (https://github.com/arocks/edge) by yours truly or use Cookiecutter (https://github.com/pydanny/cookiecutter-django).
  • Deployment pipeline: I usually worry about...

SuperBook – your mission, should you choose to accept it

This book believes in a practical and pragmatic approach of demonstrating Django design patterns and the best practices through examples. For consistency, all our examples will be about building a social network project called SuperBook.

SuperBook focuses exclusively on the niche and often neglected market segment of people with exceptional superpowers. You are one of the developers in a team comprised of other developers, web designers, a marketing manager, and a project manager.

The project will be built in the latest version of Python (version 3.6) and Django (version 2.0) at the time of writing. Since the choice of Python 3 can be a contentious topic, it deserves a fuller explanation.

Why Python 3?

...

Summary

Beginners often underestimate the importance of a good requirements-gathering process. At the same time, it is important not to get bogged down with the details, because programming is inherently an exploratory process. The most successful projects spend the right amount of time preparing and planning before development so that it yields the maximum benefits.

We discussed many aspects of designing an application, such as creating interactive mockups or dividing it into reusable components called apps. We also discussed the steps to set up SuperBook, our example project.

In the next few chapters, we will look at each component of Django in detail and learn the design patterns and best practices around them.

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Key benefits

  • • Explore aspects of Django from Models and Views to testing and deployment
  • • Understand the nuances of web development such as browser attack and data design
  • • Walk through various asynchronous tools such as Celery and Channels

Description

Building secure and maintainable web applications requires comprehensive knowledge. The second edition of this book not only sheds light on Django, but also encapsulates years of experience in the form of design patterns and best practices. Rather than sticking to GoF design patterns, the book looks at higher-level patterns. Using the latest version of Django and Python, you’ll learn about Channels and asyncio while building a solid conceptual background. The book compares design choices to help you make everyday decisions faster in a rapidly changing environment. You’ll first learn about various architectural patterns, many of which are used to build Django. You’ll start with building a fun superhero project by gathering the requirements, creating mockups, and setting up the project. Through project-guided examples, you’ll explore the Model, View, templates, workflows, and code reusability techniques. In addition to this, you’ll learn practical Python coding techniques in Django that’ll enable you to tackle problems related to complex topics such as legacy coding, data modeling, and code reusability. You’ll discover API design principles and best practices, and understand the need for asynchronous workflows. During this journey, you’ll study popular Python code testing techniques in Django, various web security threats and their countermeasures, and the monitoring and performance of your application.

Who is this book for?

This book is for you whether you’re new to Django or just want to learn its best practices. You do not have to be an expert in Django or Python. No prior knowledge of patterns is expected for reading this book but it would be helpful.

What you will learn

  • • Make use of common design patterns to help you write better code
  • • Implement best practices and idioms in this rapidly evolving framework
  • • Deal with legacy code and debugging
  • • Use asynchronous tools such as Celery, Channels, and asyncio
  • • Use patterns while designing API interfaces with the Django REST Framework
  • • Reduce the maintenance burden with well-tested, cleaner code
  • • Host, deploy, and secure your Django projects
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : May 31, 2018
Length: 282 pages
Edition : 2nd
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788831345
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Publication date : May 31, 2018
Length: 282 pages
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Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781788831345
Vendor :
Django
Category :
Languages :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

15 Chapters
Django and Patterns Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Application Design Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Models Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Views and URLs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Templates Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Admin Interface Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Forms Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Working Asynchronously Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Creating APIs Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Dealing with Legacy Code Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Testing and Debugging Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Security Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Production-Ready Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Python 2 Versus Python 3 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Other Books You May Enjoy Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
(1 Ratings)
5 star 0%
4 star 0%
3 star 100%
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1 star 0%
darkpwhy Dec 04, 2021
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
This book is just a mix of data that you can find in django doc itself. It's provide some information that i think is usefull, but it also have some weird things like talking about Jinja2 and their andvantage, but just after recomend that you must use just the DTL (Django templates itself). If the cost of the book was 20$ i think is worth it, but 40$+ it's just nonsense.
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