Getting started: Creating a new application

Let's get started by creating a new Django project and application. Just so we have something consistent to work with throughout this book, let's assume we are setting out to create a new market-research type website. At this point, we don't need to decide much about this site except some names for the Django project and at least one application that it will include. As market_research is a bit long, let's shorten that to marketr for the project name. We can use django-admin.py to create a new Django project:

kmt@lbox:/dj_projects$ django-admin.py startproject marketr

Then, from within the new marketr directory, we can create a new Django application using the manage.py utility. One of the core applications for our market research project will be a survey application, so we will start by creating it:

kmt@lbox:/dj_projects/marketr$ python manage.py startapp survey

Now we have the basic skeleton of a Django project and application: a settings.py file, a urls.py file, the manage.py utility, and a survey directory containing .py files for models, views, and tests. There is nothing of substance placed in the auto-generated models and views files, but in the tests.py file there are two sample tests: one unit test and one doctest. We will examine each in detail next.