During this first Django article, we answer the question, “What is Django?” and give you a general idea of what makes this website builder unique.
During this module, we’ll go over the main features, as well as some of the more advanced features that we won’t have time to go over in depth. Some of the main parts of Django applications will also be shown to you, even though you won’t be able to test them yet.
What is Django?
Django is a high-level Python web framework that makes it easy to build secure and easy-to-maintain websites quickly. Django is a web development tool that was built by experts. It takes care of a lot of the work that goes into making a website, so you don’t have to start from scratch.
It is free and open source, has a lot of people who use it, good documentation, and a lot of free and paid support options.
Django helps you write software that is:
Complete
Django is based on the “Batteries included” philosophy, which means that almost everything a developer might want to do can be done “out of the box.” Because everything you need is in one “product,” it all works together, has the same design principles, and has a lot of up-to-date documentation.
Versatile
In the past, Django has been used to build almost any kind of website, from content management systems and wikis to social networks and news sites. A client-side framework can be used with it, and it can send content in almost any format (including HTML, RSS feeds, JSON, XML, etc). Django is used to build the site you are on now.
As far as functionality goes, it has a lot of options for almost everything you could want. For example, it has a lot of popular databases and templating engines, but it can also be expanded to use other parts if needed.
Secure
Django helps web developers avoid making many common security mistakes by giving them a framework that has been built to “do the right things” to protect the website.
Django, for example, makes sure that user accounts and passwords are safe by not putting them in cookies that can be hacked. Instead, cookies only have a key, and the actual data is stored in the database, not in cookies.
Where did it come from?
Django was first made in 2003 and 2005 by a web team that made and maintained newspaper websites.
It took the team a while to figure out and reuse a lot of the same code and design patterns. “Django” is the name of the open-source project that came out in July 2005, when this common code was made into a web development tool called “Django.”
There was a milestone release (1.0) for Django in September 2008, and now there is a new version (3.1), which is even better than the last one (2020). In each new release, there have been new features and bug fixes. This includes support for new types of databases, template engines, and caching, as well as "generic" view functions and classes (which reduce the amount of code that developers have to write for a number of programming tasks). Read also: What is CGI technology and Its uses
Django is now a very popular open source project with a lot of people using it and giving it ideas. Django still has some features that show where it came from, but now it is a flexible framework that can be used to build any kind of website.
What does Django code look like?
In a traditional data-driven website, a web application waits for HTTP requests from the web browser before it can do anything else (or other client). When a request comes in, the application looks at the URL and other information in the POST data or GET data to figure out what the application needs.
According to what is needed, it may then read or write information from a database or do other things that will help it do what is needed. Read also: Dogecoin: Everything You Need To Know Finally, the application will send back to the web browser what it has found. This can be done by inserting the data into placeholders in an HTML template.
In December 2021, the Django team released Django v4, which has a lot of new features, like better customization and the use of the template engine for forms, Formsets, and ErrorList.
However, it was said that only Python versions 3.8, 3.9, and 3.10 will be able to run Django v4.0. In addition, the Django v3.2.x series is the last one that can run on Python 3.6 and 3.7.
Upgrading to Django v4.0
Before you upgrade to Django v4.0, make sure your project doesn’t have any deprecation warnings when you use your current Django version. There are deprecation warnings by default, but you can turn them off. To turn on deprecation warnings, use the command below: test
$ python -Wa manage.py test
Installation
Then you can go ahead and install Django v4.0. There are two flags that you can use to upgrade Django with pip: —upgrade or -U.
$ python -m pip install -U Django
Django v4.0 dropped support
There were some third-party package versions that will no longer be supported with Django v4.0. You can see a list of each one below, with a description of what each one is.
V9.6 of PostgreSQL
Django v4.0 doesn’t work with PostgreSQL v9.6 and older, so you can’t use it. Django v4.0 will only work with PostgreSQL v10.
Oracle v12.2 and 18c
Django v4.0 will only work with Oracle v19. People who make Django say that they no longer support Oracle versions 18c and older. It says that by April 2024, Django v3.2 will no longer be able to work with Oracle v18c.
What’s new in Django v4.0?
zoneinfo default time zone
Time zones have changed in Django v4.0. The default Pytz time zone has been moved to ZoneInfo. The pytz time zone is no longer supported and will not be in the next release of Django v5.0 or later.
The move to zoneinfo isn’t very difficult. You can choose the current time zone and change datetimes in forms and templates to the time zone that is the same as the time zone you are in. In UTC, you can still do things with aware datetime instances without having to change anything about them.
Template-based form rendering
Forms, Formsets, and ErrorList now use the template engine to make them more customizable.
Several things have changed in the way render(), get context(), and the name of a template are used in the new version of Django called v4.0. The render() options are now optional, and the default value for all of them is "None," which is the same for all of them.
When using the following code:
render(template_name=None, context=None, renderer=None)
If the values for the parameters are not passed in, the parameters will default to the following values:
template_name:template_name()Context: Contains a value that is returned byget_context()renderer: Value returned bydefault_renderer
For flexibility, formsetrendering has been moved to the template engine in Django v4.0.
When using a formset within a view, you’ll use the management form inside the template. Let’s take a look at an example of a view:
from django.forms import formset_factory from django.shortcuts import render from myapp.forms import ArticleForm def manage_articles(request): ArticleFormSet = formset_factory(ArticleForm) if request.method == 'POST': formset = ArticleFormSet(request.POST, request.FILES) if formset.is_valid(): # do something with the formset.cleaned_data pass else: formset = ArticleFormSet() return render(request, 'manage_articles.html', {'formset': formset})
The manage_articles.html template will look like the following code:
<form method="post"> <table> {{ formset }} </table> </form>
Internationalization
Malay language translations were not available in previous versions of Django. Django v4.0 now lets you do this. Developers can now use the Malay language in their projects.
Localization
Use L10N’s default value was changed from False to True in Django v4.0 so that it was in line with the best way to do things,
USE L10N is no longer used with Dango v4.0. As a side note, it was also said that in Django v5.x, any date or number shown will be localized by default.
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS
You can’t just use hostnames when setting CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS in Django v4.0. Instead, you have to use schemes like http:// or https://.
This also means that numbers with a dot in the beginning now have to start with the letter “.” For example, you would change.example.com to https://.example.com.
scrypt is a password hasher.
It is better to use scrypt instead of PBKDF2 as a password hasher for Django v4.0 because it limits how many times an attacker can use the same password.
scrypt is made to use more memory than other password-based methods of getting a key.
Functional unique constraints
unique constraints now have a new *expressions option that lets programmers make functional unique constraints with the same database restrictions as Index.expressions, like the code below shows.
from django.db import models from django.db.models import UniqueConstraint from django.db.models.functions import Lower class MyModel(models.Model): first_name = models.CharField(max_length=255) last_name = models.CharField(max_length=255) class Meta: constraints = [ UniqueConstraint( Lower('first_name'), Lower('last_name').desc(), name='first_last_name_unique', ), ]
The Meta.restrictions option is used to apply functionally unique constraints to models.
Conclusion
Some of the new features in Django v4.0, some of the third-party packages that Django v4.0 doesn’t work with anymore, and the steps you need to take to upgrade your old version to Django v4.0 were covered in this post.
Django v4.0 has a lot of new features that aren’t just in this post. Make sure to check out Django’s official announcement for a full list of all of the new features. I hope you found this tutorial useful!
