Django on Windows - First Week

I am basing this work on Django for Beginners, but as that book is focused on Linux/Mac I have kept these notes for what I needed to do on my PC. I will keep extending this over the week of Aug 13 (yes, Friday the 13th).

Get Django set up in Virtual Environment

https://codesource.io/setting-up-a-virtual-environment-for-your-django-project/
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/35950740/virtualenv-is-not-recognized-as-an-internal-or-external-command-operable-prog

• pip install virtualenv
• I had to open an administrator cmd prompt and do
• c:\python39\python.exe -m pip install --upgrade pip

For each project you need to create virtualenv and add django

• cd into the directory where you want to create python (e.g., C:\Users\madyor\OneDrive - Microsoft\Desktop\python\django\playground)
• python -m virtualenv .
• .\scripts\activate
• pip install django
• pip install pandas
• run django-admin startproject to verify that django is installed.

Create Your Project

• django-admin startproject config . Note: the . at the end places the project in the current directory (instead of creating a new child with that name)
• python manage.py migrate
• python manage.py runserver If this command fails, you may need to do the .\scripts\activate to get into the virtual environment (where django is installed)
• exit gets you out of a virtualenv

Create another app in your project

• python manage.py startapp pages
• Register the app in config/settings (under installed_apps add 'pages',)
• update the views page with the following code

from django.views.generic import ListView, DetailView
from django.views.generic.edit import CreateView, UpdateView
from .models import Page
from django.views.generic import TemplateView

from django.shortcuts import render

class PageListView(ListView): 
    model=Page
    template_name = 'home.html'

class PageDetailView(DetailView): 
    model=Page
    template_name = 'page_detail.html'

class PageCreateView(CreateView): 
    model = Page
    template_name = 'page_new.html'
    fields=['title', 'summary', 'description']

class PageUpdateView(UpdateView): 
    model = Page
    template_name = 'page_new.html'
    fields=['title', 'summary', 'description']

• create a urls.py within the pages folder

from django.urls import path
from .views import PageDetailView, PageListView, PageCreateView, PageUpdateView

urlpatterns = [
    path('page/new/', PageCreateView.as_view(), name='page_new'), 
    path('page/<int:pk>/', PageDetailView.as_view(), name='page_detail'), 
    path('page/<int:pk>/edit', PageUpdateView.as_view(), name='page_update'), 
    path('', PageListView.as_view(), name='home'),
]

• update the config/urls.py to reference the pages.urls (path('', include('pages.urls')), and add from django.urls.conf import include)

Initiate Git

• git init
• git status
• git Add -A
• git commit -m "initial commit"

Create a Repo on Github

• git remote add origin https://github.com/dyor/special-octo-journey.git
• git branch -M main
• git push -u origin main

Day 2

Using Templates

• Templates are like views in MVC (and views are like controllers)
• In the config/settings.py, update DIRS to this: 'DIRS': [str(BASE_DIR.joinpath('templates'))],

Day 3

Use a base template

• In the pages app, create a templates folder and add a home.html and a base.html file

• for base.html add some code
  

<a href={% url 'home' %}>Home</a> 
{% block content %}
{% endblock content %}

• in the home.html file add

{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block content %}
<h1>Homepage</h1>

{% for page in object_list %}
    <div>
    <a href="{% url  'page_detail' page.pk %}">{{ page.title }}</a>
    </div>
{% endfor %}

{% endblock %}

• Create a detail page in templates folder called page_detail.html

{% extends 'base.html' %}

{% block content %}

<h1>{{ page.title }}</h1>
{{ page.summary }}
<br/>
<br/>
{{ page.description }}

{% endblock %}

• add model to admin.py in admin page

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Page

# Register your models here.
admin.site.register(Page)

Random Commands

python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate