Django is one of the most popular web backend frameworks for Python, and for good reason. The project's website says it all in one sentence: "Django makes it easier to build better web apps more quickly and with less code."
Intro
When developing a web backend in Python, you have many good choices. Among full-stack frameworks, there are Django, Masonite, TurboGears, and web2py. If you're looking for something with a smaller footprint, you can choose between FastAPI, Flask, Bottle, and Pyramid.
At some point, you may ask yourself: when should I use Django, then? With so many choices, should I be using it at all?
When to Use Django?
Rapid Development
Developing with Django is fast. Seriously fast. "Django was designed to help developers take applications from concept to completion as quickly as possible." This speed is largely due to its built-in features, such as the admin dashboard, the ORM, easily customizable authentication and authorization, form handling with CSRF protection, and more. The foundations are already in place, so you can move faster without sacrificing much quality.
Furthermore, Django encourages the "Don't Repeat Yourself" (DRY) principle, allowing developers to write less code while achieving more functionality. This is particularly helpful for projects with tight deadlines, where rapid iteration and deployment are essential. It also keeps the project structure consistent, since the framework suggests a typical solution for most problems, so there is no need to reinvent the wheel.
Scalable Applications
If you think Django won't work at a large scale just because Python is a relatively slow language, think again. "Some of the busiest sites on the web leverage Django's ability to quickly and flexibly scale." The framework is designed to handle high-traffic applications with ease. Some of the features that contribute to Django's scalability include:
Caching Framework
Django includes a robust caching framework that makes it a breeze to cache content, views, and entire pages. This caching mechanism helps reduce the load on the server and improves the application's performance. It also integrates with the most common tools, such as Redis and Memcached.
Asynchronous Tasks
Django supports asynchronous tasks through integrations with task queues like Celery. Developers can offload time-consuming tasks to background workers, so the main application stays responsive and scalable.
Load Balancing
Django applications can be easily load-balanced across multiple servers using standard load balancing techniques, such as round-robin or least-connection algorithms. This allows the application to handle increased traffic by distributing the load across multiple servers.
Security
Security in Django
"Django takes security seriously and helps developers avoid many common security mistakes." Security is a critical part of web development, and the team behind the framework makes sure their creation is secure. Django provides built-in protection against various types of attacks. Some of its main security features include:
Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) Protection
Django's template engine automatically escapes all user-provided input, preventing XSS attacks where malicious scripts could be injected into web pages. This feature helps protect the application and its users from potential harm.
Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) Protection
Django includes a robust CSRF protection mechanism that helps prevent unauthorized actions on behalf of a user. This protection is automatically enabled for all POST, PUT, and DELETE requests, making it difficult for attackers to perform unauthorized actions.
SQL Injection Protection
Django's ORM automatically sanitizes database queries, preventing SQL injection attacks. By using parameterized queries and escaping user input, Django ensures that malicious SQL code cannot be executed on the database.
Secure Password Hashing
Django uses secure password hashing algorithms, such as Argon2, to store user passwords. These algorithms are designed to be computationally expensive, making it difficult for attackers to brute-force or crack the hashed passwords.
Secure Headers
Django sets several security-related HTTP headers by default, such as X-Content-Type-Options, X-Frame-Options, and Referrer-Policy. These headers help protect the application and its users by enforcing security policies in web browsers.
API Development
On its own, Django is already very good for API development. You define a model, then define a view that uses JsonResponse from django.http, and on the surface there's usually not much more to it.
If you want, you can also use Django Rest Framework. The addition to Django is a common choice among web app developers who want to write a front-end in, say, Next.js, and also develop a mobile app, among other reasons.
Django REST Framework is really easy to integrate, with the site's documentation listing only three steps to get started: installing it with pip or poetry, adding "rest_framework" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting, and, to get started quickly, adding REST framework's login and logout views to your root "urls.py" file. Django Rest Framework makes building complex APIs easy and fast by providing built-in tools, such as serializers, base views, viewsets and mixins. Combining the last two lets you add endpoints or features simply by adding mixins to your viewset class inheritance.
Which Companies Use Django?
Django is in use at companies that scaled to operate on petabytes of data every day:
- Instagram. Django is in use at both Instagram and Threads, running on Cinder, a custom CPython version developed at Meta. Fun fact: Instagram was able to sustain 30 million users with only 3 engineers.
- Clubhouse. The popular app was able to handle 1 million requests per minute with only two backend engineers.
- Sentry. The popular SaaS handles 20 billion events per month from some of the biggest services, while preparing to handle twice that.
- Disqus. The immensely popular user engagement platform runs on Django. You can only imagine how many comments and other items the back-end Python framework must handle.
If you need more proof that Django can work for you and your business, look at this webpage. It lists a multitude of projects of all sizes built with this full-stack framework.
Conclusion
We use Django because it is scalable, secure, and efficient for developers, even though ticking all these boxes at the same time can seem impossible. It's all thanks to the solid foundations you can easily build on. We have successfully developed many projects using this Python framework and have no plans to give up on it. It lets us write great services quickly while maintaining high quality. If you'd like to discuss working together, do not hesitate to contact us.
Originally published at ordergroup.co.
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