Introduction

Because Django has been around since 2007, there is a rich ecosystem of third-party libraries that can be plugged into an application to give it extra features. So far, we have learned a lot about Django and used many of its features, including database models, URL routing, templating, forms, and more. We used these Django tools directly to build a web app, but now we will look at how to leverage the work of others to quickly add even more advanced features to our own apps. We have alluded to apps for storing files, (in Chapter 5, Serving Static Files, we mentioned an app, django-storages, that can store our static files in a CDN), but in addition to file storage, we can also use them to plug into third-party authentication systems, integrate with payment gateways, customize how our settings are built, modify images, build forms more easily, debug our site, use different types of databases, and much more. Chances are, if you want to add a certain feature, an app exists...