10 Practical Django Tips and Advice

Django, as an outstanding Python open source framework, may not get as much praise as other popular frameworks such as Rails, but it is as refined as other frameworks and pays great attention to the DRY (Don't Repeat Yoursef) principle and the reusability of components. Make coding simpler by automating the process.

If certain methods and techniques can be used flexibly in Django projects, it will greatly speed up software development and avoid a lot of headaches. The author lists a few points below. These methods, from shallow to deep, can help programmers of any level become more proficient in using Django.

1. Use relative paths in configuration

For some reasons, projects may often be migrated back and forth. This is definitely a tricky question if you haven't planned for this possibility in advance. Rob Hudson has a great tip for ensuring your Django project can be easily moved back and forth during deployment. Just write a few lines of code in your configuration file (settings.py).

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
  
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    BASE_DIR + '/templates',
)

2. Use the {%url%} tag

Use the backward-compatible {%url%} tag as much as possible to replace the hard-coded href, and use the absolute path url (of course it is best not to Doing this) achieves the same effect. Once your Django project is migrated, those links will not be affected. (Translator's Note: For example, if we have a views.about function pointing to the about page r'^about/$', we can {% url views.about as about_url %} and then use the variable {{about_url}} to replace the absolute URL. Address) Although it is not the most advanced technique, it is definitely worth applying to your Django project.

Photo by Cloudzilla.

3. Try to apply Django admin to PHP projects

One of the greatest features of Django is the user authentication system that has become the core function of Django. It is easy to install and is mainly used for user authentication and other necessary configurations. This cool user system is even recommended for use in your PHP projects, and here's Jeff Croft's take on why Django can be a great system management module for any application in any language.

4. Use an independent media server

It is not a big problem to put static files in the same server as the Django project in the development environment, but it should not be used in the production environment. Why? Efficiency issues. Jacobian.org gives a reasonable explanation. By using an independent server to process static files, performance will be effectively improved. If you don't want to buy a server, it is relatively cheaper to use Amazon S3.

5. Use the Debugger toolbar

Debugging tools are indispensable for any language. They can speed up development and point out potential defects. Rob Hudson developed a django debugging tool that is very useful for developers tool.

6. Use Django unit testing

Use unit testing to ensure that your code changes are as expected without breaking any old code for backward compatibility. A powerful feature of Django is that it makes writing unit tests extremely easy. Django can also directly use Python's text testing and unit testing. Django's documentation provides a detailed tutorial and sample code on how to do unit testing to make the code run correctly and remove annoying bugs

7. Use cheat cards

Here are two pages of cheat cards, in Things in the Django documentation that you may have been looking for for a long time can be found here at a glance. It contains the following themes

Template:

Template tags and options

Template filters and options

Date formatting syntax quick reference

Model:

Fields and options

Options for common fields

Metatype options

Model management options

Forms:

Fields and options

Common field options

Standard error message keys

8. Use Django-chunks

In addition to using Django's rich In addition to making it easier to create chunks in a text editor, Django-chunks are also used in templates, which is an indispensable tool for reusing code chunks.

9. Use Memcache

If performance has become a tough issue in your Django project, then you will need to use some caching strategies. However, Django offers many options for caching. The best one at the moment is undoubtedly Memcache. Installing memcache with Django is very simple if you use the cmemcache module. As long as the module is installed, you only need to modify one line of configuration items, and your Django page will become lighter.

10. When using Django, it’s better to act than to think

If you still don’t fully understand the power of Django after reading this article, a reasonable reason to use Django in your next project is: it can Save time on a variety of different software designs. Jeff Croft explains why creating a project with Django is more efficient than designing it yourself. Django allows you to extend your Web site without worrying about design or code or database compatibility, and it will just work great.