mattblack85 / django-bproject

django-bproject part 1

Setup and run!

So we want to build a Django-powered application. Before starting we need some tools, assure the following things are installed on your pc:

• pip (it makes life easier)
• Django
• Python
• virtualenv
• PostgreSQL
• psycopg2 (PostgreSQL database adapter for Python)

If you don't have Python installed, do that first. Most of Linux distros come out today with pre-installed Python, if you are on Windows download the .exe (2.7 version) and do the rest of the job.

Now we should install pip; pip is a tool for installing easily Python packages, if you run Linux you can probably install it from your package manager, if you're running something else you should read this https://pip.pypa.io/en/latest/installing.html

Now that we have pip installed we can do the rest of the job easily, let's go ahead!

Fire your console and type: pip install virtualenv (or probably sudo pip install virtualenv on Linux)

virtualenv creates a virtual environment where we can mess around without caring to break something (if everything is done correctly, of course!)

Let's create a folder for our project, let's call it django-bproject. Let's now install a virtualenv inside our folder, type virtualenv path/to/your/django-bproject where of course you should write your own path to the folder created some minutes ago instead of path/...... You should now see 4 additional folders inside django-bproject one: * bin * include * lib * lib64

Let's now install Django! Activate first the virtualenv typing . bin/activate (note: you should be into django-bproject folder when typing that command), now that virtualenv is active type bin/pip install django. The command will install Django ONLY inside your virtualenv, this is particulary useful if you are going to manage different project with different dependencies/Django versions. If you want to exit the virtualenv just type deactivate in your console.

If you are not into django-bproject folder enter it, it's now time to django-initialize our project typing bin/django-admin.py startproject bproject ., the last two arguments are respectively the name of the folder where will live the "core" structure of our project and the folder where we want to initialize the django project (. in this case is the folder where we are, so it should be django-bproject. If you haven't created a folder yet, you can omit the last argument, in this case django-admin.py script will create a new one with the same name of the project.

Good job! Now the folder django-bproject should look like:

We are ready to move on, the preparation has been quite long, but it teached you lot of basic concepts you will use quite often during your (hope long :) ) trip with Django.

Settings

Now we have to tweak some settings in order to proceed. In the folder bproject there is a settings.py file, open it and ignore almost everything, for now look at SECRET_KEY and DATABASES and INSTALLED_APPS variables.

• SECRET_KEY: is a secret and should remain secret, it's created automatically (and randomly) by django and it provides cryptographic signing, don't share it for any reason with anyone.
• DATABASES: here we can pass data to connect to our db, default values are for SQLite so we have to change them because we are going to use PostgreSQL, set ENGINE to 'django.db.backend.postgresql_psycopg2', set NAME to 'bpro_test', set USER to 'buser'. There are other settings but we are not going to use it for this tutorial, if you want know more take a look at https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.6/ref/settings/#databases
• INSTALLED_APPS: we won't touch it for know, but remember that if you are going to create apps for your poject (python manage.py startapp appname) you should add it to INSTALLED_APPS, we will see why later.

PostgreSQL initial setup

Before next lines, you should assure that your postgres instance is configured and it's running. To configure it you should run the command postgresql-setup initdb; to start the server it depends a lot on your OS.

We should now create a database and a user for our database, open your console and type psql -U postgres, now we are into postgresql console, let's create our user:

• CREATE ROLE buser;

this comand will create the user for us, now let's create the database and let's assing the ownership to our buser:

• CREATE DATABASE bpro_test OWNER buser;

Don't forget to leave postgres console with \q before proceeding

Sync & go

Well done! We are ready to start making awesome stuff. We are going to create some tables, but without writing any sql for now; open your console, assure that you're in the project folder and type python manage.py syncdb

You should see an output like this:

syncdb command runs under the scene SQL to create tables, nice uh? All job done with 0 lines of raw sql.

We are done for now, if everything's ok and your project structure/content is the same of the part 1 branch of this tutorial (except folder bin/ lib/ lib64/ and include/ because I'm not going to upload them to github) you are ready for part 2!

django-bproject's Issues

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