Rebecca-254

Posted on Jun 30

day 4: Django structure

#webdev #java #python #github

Hello, today marks my 4th day in my journey of developers. Am quite excited to share what I did today while learning Django structure.

step 1; setting up my project.

As part of my tech journey, I decided to build a Django project to practice web development. I named my project njeriproject. Here’s how I got started:


django-admin startproject njeriproject
cd njeriproject
python -m venv rbenv
rbenv\Scripts\activate
pip install django

in this i created a virtual environment by the name brenv and installed django.
Then I created two apps inside it:

Step 2: Understanding the Django Structure

After running the command, my project looked like this:

njeri/
├── manage.py
├── mysite/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── asgi.py
│   └── wsgi.py

I explored and learned what each file does:

manage.py- This lets me run commands like runserver or makemigrations
settings.py- This Contains all project settings like installed apps and database config
urls.py- Handles all routing and linking to app URLs
asgi.py and wsgi.py- Help when deploying to a web server

Step 3: Creating Two Django Apps

To organize my site into separate features, I created two apps where each app came with important files like;
views.py, models.py, admin.py, apps.py, tests.py, and a migrations/ folder

Step 4: Registering the Apps

To make Django recognize both apps, I opened mysite/settings.py and added them in INSTALLED_APPS

Step 5: Writing Views and Creating URLs

For app1
In app1/views.py i created this code

from django.shortcuts import render

def app1_home(request):
    return render(request, 'app1_home.html')

then created urls.py for app1 added the following in it

from django.urls import path
from .views import app1_home

urlpatterns = [
    path('', app1_home, name='app1_home'),
]

** For app2**
In app2/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render

def app2_home(request):
    return render(request, 'app2_home.html')

Then I created app2/urls.py:

from django.urls import path
from .views import app2_home

urlpatterns = [
    path('', app2_home, name='app2_home'),
]

Step 6: Connecting Both Apps in mysite/urls.py

Now it was time to connect both apps to the main URL configuration.

In mysite/urls.py I wrote:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('app1/', include('app1.urls')),
    path('app2/', include('app2.urls')),
]

At first, I forgot to import include and Django gave me an error. But once I fixed that, the server ran smoothly.

Step 7: Adding Templates for HTML Pages

After getting simple text responses to show up using HttpResponse, I wanted to display proper HTML pages using templates.

So I created a templates folder inside each app
In both app1 and app2, I made this folder structure:

app1/
└── templates/
    └── app1/
        └── home.html

app2/
└── templates/
    └── app2/
        └── home.html

I created basic HTML files in both apps.

I updated the views to render templates
In app1/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render

def home(request):
    return render(request, 'app1/home.html')

In app2/views.py:

`from django.shortcuts import render

def home(request):
    return render(request, 'app2/home.html')

Step 8: Testing It All

I ran the server with the following command

python manage.py runserver

Then I opened my browser and tested. this is what my page looked like after adding /app1 in the URL generated.

Seeing both apps work made me feel proud and confident in using Django.

This is what I Learned

Django projects can be modular — I can add many apps like I did with app1 and app2.
The outer folder (njeri) holds everything; the inner mysite/ config folder manages settings, URLs, and deployment files.
Even small mistakes (like forgetting include) can break the app — but the error messages help a lot

Finally

Building the njeri project taught me how Django is structured and how everything connects from creating apps, to writing views, to linking URLs. Working with two apps in one project showed me Django’s power and flexibility.

I’m still learning, but now I feel more confident to build real Django websites.
Feel free to connect and grow together at github @Rebecca-254

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