What is the meaning of source bin/activate in command prompt? - django

I am newbie of django , I have installed django in a given folder "Dev->django" but I am not able to start django. When I run a command source bin/activate output will be like (django) akriti#akriti:~/Dev/django$
what is the meaning of (django) here?

It's the name of your virtual environment. In order to incapsulate installed packages and prevent from conflicts between different version packages for different projects it's convenient to use Virtual Environment. You can read more there.

Related

Is virtual environment in Django created in one Operating System work in another Operating System?

I'm a beginner in web programming. I've been working on a Django project along with my teammates. I'm using Mac and he's using Ubuntu.
I want to know if the virtual environment created in my system will work on his machine if I sent him mine. Is virtual environment in Django OS specific?
virtual environments are OS-specific. This is because python packages can use native code that would have to be compiled on different OSes. That said, virtual environments were created to make sharing code among developers on different environments easy! The way you do it is by including a file called requirements.txt in your project. As part of getting started on this project, every developer should do the following:
python -m venv env # you only have to do this line once
source env/bin/activate # you have to do this line every time
pip install -r requirements.txt

How to start an existing Django project?

I am a new to Django and have 0 experience with this framework.
I cloned a project from git it came with requirements.txt file, but I am not sure how to run it.
Do I need to create virtual environment first and clone the project into the directory of the virtual environment, and then install the requirements?
Do I need to clone the project first into some folder and then create the virtual environment inside this folder and then install the requirements?
Do I need to use any special IDE to run the project? I tried opening the project in PyCharm, without creating a virtual environment first, and it asked me if I want to install the requirements.
I would be glad if someone could explain what is the correct way to run an already existing project.
Let's come to your doubts one by one :
Cloning a repo has nothing to do with Django. You are just making a copy of the code on your disk. Now the copy can be kept anywhere you like(say in ~/Desktop). Also, the directory of a virtual envt. just contains the code of modules you might directly import(like Django), and has nothing to do with the code of the django project. So cloning can be done before or after activating the virtual envt.
You need not create a virtual envt., but you should. A virtual envt. just ensures that you can have different versions of the same module for your different projects. It keeps things organised. So, for example you can create two different virtual envt.'s one with Django=2.0 and another with Django=1.9, to test your website for the two different Django versions.
requirements.txt contains all the modules you will be needing to run the django application. So you first create a virtual envt, activate it and then in the virtual envt., install all the modules you will need. Generally do pip install -r requirements.txt
Now all the required modules are installed, To run the website on a local server( which Django will create for you ), do python manage.py runserver and open in the browser.
No, you don't need an IDE to run the django project. Editing the code on any text editor and running the server from terminal works just fine.
P.S: If you are completely new to python, I would recommend using the conda python distribution. You can create new virtual envt. using conda create as well.
1.Grab a copy of the project.
git clone new_project.git
2.Create a virtual environment and install dependencies.
mkvirtualenv new_project
pip install -r requirements.txt
3.Duplicate new_project/new_project/local_settings_example.py and save as local_settings.py.
4.Enter your database settings in local_settings.py.
5.Initialize your database.
python ./manage.py syncdb
python ./manage.py migrate
6.If your app has a custom user model, you'll need to create a new superuser for the admin.
python ./manage.py createsuperuser
7.Run the development server to verify everything is working.
python ./manage.py runserver

Using Windows to run a virtual environment Created on Ubuntu

so i have been developing a website with a backend database. The following is my current setup and it is working great:
Currently using Ubuntu 16.04
I created a virtualenv and downloaded Django and postgreSQL within the virtual environment.
I also downloaded and am using Python 3.5.2 within the virtual environment.
My entire folder structure is on GitHub so that I can edit the code on the go (Again, everything working fine on Ubuntu).
The problem comes when I want to start doing some editing on Windows 10 using Powershell. I am unsure of how to run the 'activate.sh', 'activate.csh', or 'activate.fish' file in order to run the virtual environment and initialize my server using 'python manage.py runserver' so I can start editing my website.
Has anyone run into the problem and found out how to fix this? Any help on how to get started working on Windows would be great.
If you need any more details id be glad to provide them.
Thanks!
Assuming that you have created a virtualenv on ubuntu without relocatable option. You will have to firstly create a new virtual environment on Windows because they have differences on OS variations. So navigate to the directory where you would like to create the new virtual environment on Windows and run the following command:-
virtualenv .
(Note the . specifies current directory option)
After this there will be three directories created in your directory namely
1) Include
2) Lib
3) Scripts
As now the activate.bat file is in Scripts you can activate your virtualenv by the following command:
Scripts\activate
After the environment is activated you can pip install -r requirements.txt and then run your manage.py script as usual.
For further reference you can read:-
https://virtualenv.pypa.io/en/stable/userguide/

What do I need to do in preparation for cloning a django repository?

Assuming the django project repository is on github and I have had no interaction with it previously.
So: I cd to a new directory on my computer.
I clone the repository.
If the django project is using postgresql, do I have to have postgresql installed on my local machine?
Do I have to be running in a virtual environment to use a specific interpreter?
Thanks Peter
Database
You can actually use another database on your local copy if you choose, although in general it's a good idea to use the same database locally.
If you're going to be using postgres locally, yes you'll need to install it and then create your local database. Once you have your local database setup, you'll need to change some config values of your DATABASES property in settings.
Packages
Your project will also have some dependencies which should be listed in a requirements.txt file at the root directory. If it is not, you'll need to find out which packages need to be installed via pip freeze in the production console.
Virtual Env
You should use a virtual environment, but it's not completely necessary to get your project up and running. Virtualenvs allow you to have different installs and runtimes for different projects.
Other
Every project is different, and there will most likely be some other things that pop up. However, this should get you going in the right direction.

Using virtualenv with legacy Django projects

I am finally going to start using virtualenv for my Django projects on my development machine. Before I start I want to know if there are any special considerations for dealing with my existing projects. My presumed workflow is something like:
make a new virtualenv
activate the new virtualenv
Install Django in there
pip install all the packages I know I need for my existing project
copy my Django project files, app files, and git files into the project folder within the virtualenv.
Edit
6. make requirements file for deployment
This is obviously very simplified but are there any steps or considerations I am fundamentally missing? Is git going to be happy about moving? Also is it best practice to have a separate virtualenv for each Django project?
I know this is not a typical code problem, but I hope those that know more than I do can point me in the right direction.
Many thanks.
I don't see any big issue on migrating your projects and I think your 5-steps plan is correct, in particular, for steps 3/4/5 (I'd merge them), you can handle project dependencies with pip, possibly using requirement files.
Requirement files are plain text files telling to pip which packages have to be installed in your virtualenv, included your git-tracked projects which eventually can be deployed in your virtual environment as development eggs (they bring with them version control infos).
Once you have a req file, it's a matter of:
pip install -r file.req
to have all needed packages installed in your env.
As you can see from virtualenv docs, a typical req file would contain something like:
django==1.3.0
-e git://git.myproject.org/MyProject.git#egg=MyProject
I usually keep each project in its own virtualenv, so I can deploy it to the production server the same way I do for local development.