I'm new to Django and I'm trying to wrap my head around how these apps are supposed to be organized. I have the following questions:
Are apps like divs that are generated separately?
Can we have apps within apps?
Can we have apps that when clicked on, change other apps with javascript?
Right now I just have one views.py file and it loads all of its content through different function calls.
So right now I'm faced with if I should break up my views.py into smaller apps.
Am I going about Django the correct way?
Are apps defined like the they are in picture below, or are apps supposed to act more like a page?
What if I want a header, breadcrumbs, and footer for all my pages? I'm super confused #.#
Apps have nothing whatsoever to do with divs. Django is not a CMS (although it can be used to create CMSs) and doesn't dictate the layout of your templates.
The usual way to handle different blocks on the page that need different logic to populate them is via custom template tags. James Bennett has a good writeup on this, although the syntax is rather out of date so refer to the first link for that.
Related
I'm currently writing django project and got confused when it came to separation into apps. Project consists of posts and categories which are kept in one app, also there is a 'main' app which handles user profile view, login, logout and registration. Now I'm trying to implement user-to-user messages and I'm wondering if it should be kept as separate app.
If Message model is kept in application 'messages' how do I realize show_messages view?
1) It seems that it should be stored in 'main' app since it's linked by my_profile view. It would just get all Message instances form 'messages' app and render template extending profile.html or including from 'messages' app a partial template responsible only for messages listing. But why would I then need separate application just to hold one model there with some helper functions?
2) Secondly I wonder about placing show_messages view in 'messages' app but then I would need to use template which extends template from other application which again seems to be violation of self-containment rule. Also all "accounts/" urls are currently kept in main.urls so I feel wrong about adding "accounts/profile/messages" rule to messages.url.
3) Finally I think about moving Message model with all helpers and templates to 'main' app since messages are designed to work with User models and views therefore forcing additional separation seems useless.
Thanks for reading my thoughts, I'll appreciate all clues and explanations.
When I first started working with Django, I found the answers on this SO question to be particularly helpful, regarding app/project layout: Projects vs Apps
Many of the answers are useful, but this one is particularly pithy:
Try to answer question: "What does my application do?". If you cannot answer in single sentence, then maybe you can split it to several apps with cleaner logic?
I've read this thought somewhere soon after I've stared to work with django and I find that I ask this question my self quite often and it helps me.
Your apps don't have to be reusable, they can depend on each other, but they should do one thing.
Interdependence of apps isn't always problematic. For example, in a lot of my projects I have a separate app that is used solely for creating dynamic menus. In order to work properly, I need to import the specific models of that site into that app -- so I couldn't just drop it into another site, unaltered, and expected it to work. Nonetheless, the other 90% of the code in that app is completely reusable, and it's easier for me to move the relevant code to a new project if its already spun out into a separate app -- even though that app only holds a templatetag and a template.
Ultimately, a django site would technically run just fine with ALL models/views/etc in one big, unwieldy app. But by breaking your project down into "this app performs this specific function" you're probably going make managing your code a lot easier for yourself.
Regarding the 'url' point in 2, there's no reason not to subspace URLs. You are already doing this in a django project already -- mostly likely your main urls.py has an include() to another app, such as your main.urls. There's no reason your main.urls can't also have an include() to your messages app.
I am working on a website. On the Homepage, I want to show the posts in the center and show famous tags on the right side of the page. Now, posts and tags are two different apps and their views/tempaltes are calculated/generated in two separate functions.
How can I show what I want on my Homepage keeping my mind that its two different views being called. As far as I understand, I can only call a single view to show my homepage.
This must be possible but I am unable to understand this. Any help will be much appreciated.
I think you need to create a custom template tag that in this case called: Inclusion tags
You can look into writing a custom template tag for the tags. That way the tag logic can stay in the right application.
It depends how these different apps render the templates. If they just render the template without extending from a base template you could simply use AJAX to load all the content into your homepage.
If not, then there is no other way than writing a custom solution for this. This could be an extension to your views, a custom template tag as already mentioned or something else according to what exactly you need.
In Drupal you could choose in which "region" of your site you want your block displayed. You did not have to modify any php/html code in order to achieve this.
Can such a thing be achieved with Django, and if yes, how?
By block I understand a piece of html output that doesn't have it's own URL and gets displayed along side the main data. (for example a search box or a poll)
Hm you probably want to create context processor and just output from it where you want it in template?
If you want reordering of content blocks in html output inside admin then you need something to generate that output like cms. You could try something like django-fluent-contents for this without requiring big cms.
Django and Drupal shouldn't be compared like this: Drupal is a CMS, Django is a web framework.
If you want to get a somewhat similar experience, I would look at using django-cms. With this, you can create numerous templates and set placeholders within these templates (these are regions of the page like 'sidebar', 'footer', 'content area' etc.). When you go to create a new page in django-cms, you select which template you want to use (maybe a two column layout or a three column layout with a header - depending on what you have created) and then you choose what content (or plugins) you want to place within the placeholders you have created in the template. So this is a somewhat similar experience to Drupal's regions.
I have just learnt about Django apps. I want to know that within one site, if I make different apps. like, users, profiles, polls, blogs,comments, jobs , applications then how can I manage them to make them intereactive? And is it how the concept of app should be? I want to have things loosely coupled that's why asking? Rails work on the way of REST, so do Django support that also with the use of apps? May be my questions seems a bit ambiguous because I am new to django and some of my concepts are still messed up.
Please tell what ever you know.
The general idea is that apps should be as loosely coupled as possible. The goal is to have completely self-contained functionality. Now, of course, that's not always possible and many times it even makes sense to bring in functionality from another app. To do that, you simply import whatever you need. For example, if your "blogs" app needed to work with your Comment model in your "comments" app you'd simply add the following to the top of the python file you're working in:
from comments.models import Comment
You can then use Comment as if it were defined right in the same file.
As far as REST goes, Django's views are much more fluid. You can name your view whatever you like; you need only hook it up to the right urlpattern in urls.py. Django views can return any content type, you just prepare the response and tell it what mimetype to serve it as (the default is HTML).
I'm working on a Django site with a basic three column design. Left column navigation, center column content and right column URL specific content blocks.
My question is about the best method of controlling the URL specific content blocks in the right column.
I am thinking of something along the lines of the Flatpages app that will make the content available to the template context if the URL matches a pre-determined pattern (perhaps regex?).
Does anyone know if such an app already exists?
If not, I am looking for some advice about the best way to implement it. Particularly in relation to the matching of patterns to the current URL. Is there any good way to re-use parts of the Django URL dispatcher for this use?
Django CMS is a good suggestion, it depends on how deep you want to go. If this is just the beginning of different sorts of dynamic content you want then you should go that way for sure.
A simple one-off solution would be something like this:
You would just need to write a view and add some variables on the end of the URL that would define what showed up there. Depending on how fancy you need to get, you could just create a simple models, and just map the view to the model key
www.example.com/content/sidecontent/jokes/
so if "jokes" was your block of variable sidecontent (one of many in your sides model instances) the urls.py entry for that would be
(r'^content/sidecontent/(?P<side>)/$,sides.views.showsides),
and then in your sides app you have a view with a
def showsides(request, side):
Sides.objects.get(pk=side)
etc...
For something like this I personally would use Django CMS. It's like flatpages on steroids.
Django CMS has a concept of Pages, Templates, and Plugins. Each page has an associated template. Templates have placeholders where you can insert different plugins. Plugins are like mini-applications that can have dynamic model-based content.
Although Django-CMS is an interesting suggestion, there are quite a few projects that do specifically what you've requested - render blocks of content based on a URL. The main one that I know about is django-flatblocks.