I’m creating a big project with Django and wondering if it is sensible to use the HTML template structure for my front end or should I implement something like React? What are each of its benefits? Is it perfectly reasonable to use HTML templates for a big project? Any advice?
Django templates are quite fully featured, and performant, and I'd use them if I could meet the requirements in my project with them alone. Adding react will increase the tooling you'll need and have to maintain, so my team only introduced it after we started to need user interfaces that were react-like (it started when we implemented an in-app to do list). So your project requirements will really dictate if you want to invest additional development and devops energy into react in order to have a more instant-update/native-app-like feel, or not.
If you are unsure, I'd recommend starting with templates and introducing react later. It's entirely possible to run an app that uses templates for 90% of your app and react only where it's needed (we do this).
The thing with React is you need to have a good API in between your back-end and your front-end. I would recommend Django Rest Framework for that. Anyway, templates are nice to quickly get something up and running, something that is mostly display centered and you don't have to do too much scripting. React makes it easier to have a heavier front-end. However, templates can handle a lot of front end as well, just you won't get access to any of the nice benefits of React. I have used templates for a big project, and it worked nicely. I didn't have to build an API, and the templates easily interacted with my back-end. I am not sure exactly what kind of project you are doing, so these are just my recommendations.
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I want to replace the default Django Admin templates with a completely revamped bootstrap version. The data in the Dashboard should be populated from the DB. How do I work with templated files ? Which files should be overriden ? In which template tag does HTML code go ?
From django docs on admin:
The admin’s recommended use is limited to an organization’s internal management tool. It’s not intended for building your entire front end around.
It's possible to change templates to do what you want, but that will be very complex - you have to basically rewrite most of the templates, get to know how it is working internally and probably change that too to your own design (after all, you are going to show specific details, like charts, data and so).
You will faster to achieve results if you going to build your own app, that will work exactly like you need without multiple fixes. Does it have to use js frameworks depends entirely on your requirements. Usually they are much more simple for admin backends, that are going to be used by owners, not clients. Anyway, if you don't have experience or knowledge in this, you will probably better off with just plain static django templates.
Django admin is just a same app as the ones you build, so limitations will be the same. Security wise, it doesn't offer much that you can't do yourself - make sure you have permissions set in models/views. Read more about security in django.
From functionality point of view, django admin just comes with CRUD access to your models, which can be done quite quickly. Once you past that, you will have much easier time adding functionality to your own app instead of overriding django admin.
Overall, I advise you to build your app for CMS-like admin panel. JS frameworks is neat, but that require burden of multiple additional tests (with api mocks), constant swapping between adding api / writing a component and much higher time consumption overall.
I am currently developing my first more complex Web Application and want to ask for directions from more experienced Developers.
First I want to explain the most important requirements.
I want to develop a Web App (no mobile apps or desktop apps) and want to use as much django as possible. Because I am comfortable with the ecosystem right now and don't have that much time to learn something new that is too complex. I am inexperienced in the Javascript World, but I am able to do a little bit of jQuery.
The idea is to have one database and many different Frontends that are branded differently and have different users and administrators. So my current approach is to develop a Backend with Django and use Django Rest Framework to give the specific data to the Frontends via REST. Because I have not that much time to learn a Frontend-Framework I wanted to use another Django instance to use as a Frontend, as I really like the Django Template language. This would mean one Django instance one Frontend, where there would be mainly TemplateViews. The Frontends will be served on different subdomains, while the backend exposes the API Endpoints on the top level domain.
It is not necessary to have a Single Page App. A Normal Website with mainly the normal request/response-cycle is fine.
Do you think this is a possible approach to do things? I am currently thinking about how to use the data in the frontend sites in the best way. As I am familiar with the Django template language I thought about writing a middleware that asks about the user details in every request cycle from the backend. The thought is to use a request.user as normally as possible while getting the data from the backend.
Or is ist better to ask these details via jQuery and Ajax Calls and don't use the django template language very much?
Maybe there is also a way to make different Frontends for the same database without using REST?
Or what would you think about using a database with each frontend, which changes everytime I make a change in the main database in the backend? Although I don't really like this approach due to the possibility of differences in data if I make a mistake.
Hopefully this is not to confusing for you. If there are questions I will answer them happily. Maybe I am also totally on the wrong track. Please don't hesitate to point that out, too.
I thank you very much in advance for your guiding and wish you a nice day.
as per my experience and knowledge, you are almost going towards correct direction.
my recommendation is for making backend rest api Django and django rest framework is the best option however for consuming those api you can look for the angular or react both works very well in terms of consuming API.
Thank you for your input om tripathi.
I think it really does make sense to use the modern js frameworks for consuming a REST API.
I looked a little further into my problem and found multitenancy to fit my requirements perfectly. There are also great plugins and good reads for that use case. Just for others some informations I stumbled upon:
https://djangopackages.org/grids/g/multi-tenancy/
https://www.vinta.com.br/blog/2017/multitenancy-juggling-customer-data-django/
Especially the second link gave me information about different design approaches. For myself I chose to go the way with one database for every Client and then using the site framework from django to seperate data. For the Subdomain resolving I use django-hosts.
Thank you again and have a nice day.
I'm a C/C++ developer and I also have experience developing web apps with C#, ASP.NET MVC and fluent nhibernate. I'm looking for non-MS alternatives for web development and I'm really interested in python so I went out after Django but I've been told that Django makes it difficult for me to personalize my HTML (not sure if this is accurate).
What I'm looking for is a Python web development framework that is integrated with an ORM, is able to generate the interfaces BUT provides an easy way for me to customize the interface to create an AJAX intensive app
go for django.
does all you wanted,
has perfect docs and even free book,
partially runs on appengine,
has really large user base,
it is mature:
db sharding, (With model router)
xss protection in forms
memcache,
localisation,
well tested support for unicode,
really easy to learn because of level of it documentation.
I'm using Flask (a very minimal web framework) and SQLAlchemy as my ORM. I'm exceedingly happy with it. Disclaimer: I'm only using this for personal projects at the moment, though I do plan to launch a web app in the next 6 months using this setup.
Various options in Python you can look at -
Django (obviously!)
Pylons
Nagare
Flask
Django is really good. And no your info is not correct, HTML templates are real easy to edit them.
Also this is from a developer of Nagare -
Ajax without to write any Javascript
code or the use of continuations makes
a Web application looks like a desktop
one. In fact we have often found that
developers like you, without prior Web
experiences, can be quicker to get
Nagare because they have nothing to
"unlearn".
I am going deeper into this framework Since you said that your app is AJAX intensive. From what I have heard, Nagare makes it easy to do so...
All these frameworks are really good. Some are really good in some areas, others not. So may be explore them all & see which best suits your purpose.
For Web applications development, we're using Nagare, coming with YUI for AJAX communications.
Having a look to Nagare might be an option.
I'm in agreement with the rest of the answers and think that Django is by-far the best choice as a "complete framework" and I think their template system is second-to-none.
If you are looking to create an ajax intensive application, I'd suggestion checking out django-piston (http://bitbucket.org/jespern/django-piston/wiki/Home). Piston is a REST API framework built on top of Django. I've used it for a number of ajax intensive applications and have found it's workflow to be incredibly clean, quick and flexible.
If you are wanting to go a bit slimmer and lighter-weight though, I'd suggest checking out web.py (http://webpy.org/) or Tornado (http://www.tornadoweb.org/).
I would definitely look into Pylons which is very thoroughly documented and has sql alchemy (one of the best python ORM's) baked in. Plus it's easy to setup and learn.
I currently am working with a framework called restish which is flavor of pylons that (surprise, surprise) puts the focus on sticking to RESTful web design. I don't think it's exactly what you're looking for in that it lacks good documentation and any form of an ORM.
Just A side note I'm pretty sure that Django uses Mako templating which gives you excellent control over the HTML.
I am learning Django and got it to work with wsgi. I'm following the tutorial here:
http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.1/intro/tutorial01/
My question is: how can I customize the look and feel of Django? Is there a repository of templates that "look good", kind of like there are for Wordpress, that I can start from? I find the tutorial counterintuitive in that it goes immediately toward customizing the admin page of Django, rather than the main pages visible to users of the site. Is there an example of a "typical" Django site, with a decent template, that I can look at and built on/modify? The polls application is again not very representative since it's so specialized.
any references on this would be greatly appreciated. thanks.
Search for generic CSS/HTML templates, and add in the Django template language where you need it. Because unless you are trying to skin a particular app (such as the admin system), there is nothing Django-specific about any of your HTML.
The fact that you're thinking in terms of Wordpress templates, and that you think the tutorial's poll application is highly specialised, are hints that you haven't really grasped what Django is. It isn't a content management system or a blog engine, although it can be used to build those things.
There's no such thing as a typical Django site, and it simply doesn't make sense to have pre-packaged templates, because the front end could be absolutely anything at all - like a poll.
You write the template like you would write any standalone HTML+CSS page, perhaps with placeholders for the content, then turn those placeholders into actual Django template tags. If you know how to do write HTML, then you know how to make a Django template.
Actually Django does not have a "look and feel". You are probably referring to the built in Django Admin application. That app comes with its own templates.
There are third party applications that can change the Admin interface, Django Grapelli is a great example.
For any other application you want to build yourself, or download. Most likely you'll have to do the templates yourself. In order to come up with something pretty you need to learn about CSS/HTML/JS and design principles as the Django Templates will quite likely be out of your way.
I always recommend HTML Dog for learning the basics of HTML, CSS and JS.
For some quick background, I'm an XHTML/CSS guy with some basic PHP knowledge. I'm trying to dip my feet into the Python pool, and so far understand how to start simple_server and access a simple Hello World return in the same .py file. This is the extent of what I understand though, heh.
How do I integrate the simple_server and your basic XHTML/CSS files? I want to start the server and automagically call, for instance, index.py (does it need to be .py?). Obviously within the index file I would have my markup and stylesheet and I would operate it like a normal site at that point.
My eventual goal is to get a basic message board going (post, edit, delete, user sessions). I realize I'll need access to a database, and I know my way around MySQL enough to not have to worry about those portions.
Thanks for the help.
EDIT: Allow me to clarify my goal, as I have been told Python does a LOT more than PHP. My goal is to begin building simple web applications into my pre-existing static XHTML pages. Obviously with PHP, you simply make sure its installed on your server and you start writing the code. I'd like to know how different Python is in that sense, and what I have to do to, say, write a basic message board in Python.
The other answers give good recommendations for what you probably want to do towards your "eventual goal", but, if you first want to persist with wsgiref.simple_server for an instructive while, you can do that too. WSGI is the crucial "glue" between web servers (not just the simple one in wsgiref of course -- real ones, too, such as Apache or Nginx [both with respective modules called mod_wsgi] as well as, for example, Google App Engine -- that one offers WSGI, too, as its fundamental API) and web applications (and frameworks that make it easier to write such applications).
Everybody's recommending various frameworks to you, but understanding WSGI can't hurt (since it will underlie whatever framework you eventually choose). And for the purpose of such understanding wsgiref.simple_server will serve you for a while longer, if you wish.
Essentially, what you want to do is write a WSGI app -- a function or class that takes two parameters (an "enviroment" dictionary, and a "start response" callable that it must call back with status and headers before returning the response's body). Your "WSGI app" can open your index.py or whatever else it wants to prep the status, headers and body it returns.
There's much more to WSGI (the middleware concept is particularly powerful), though of course you don't have to understand it very deeply -- only as deeply as you care to! See wsgi.org for tutorials &c. Gardner's two-part article, I think, is especially interesting.
Once (and if that's your choice) you understand WSGI, you can better decide whether you want it all hidden in a higher level framework such as Django (so you can focus on application-level issues instead) or use a very light and modular toolbox of WSGI utilities such as Werkzeug -- or anything in-between!-)
I would recommend Django.
"Obviously with PHP, you simply make sure its installed on your server and you start writing the code."
Not true with Python. Python is just a language, not an Apache plug-in like PHP.
Generally, you can use something like mod_wsgi to create a Python plug-in for Apache. What you find is that web page processing involves a lot of steps, none of which are part of the Python language.
You must use either extension libraries or a framework to process web requests in Python. [At this point, some PHP folks ask why Python is so popular. And the reason is because you have choices of which library or framework to use.]
PHP parses the request and allows you to embed code in the resulting page.
Python frameworks -- generally -- do not work this way. Most Python frameworks break the operation down into several steps.
Parsing the URL and locating an appropriate piece of code.
Running the code to get a result data objects.
Interpolating the resulting data objects into HTML templates.
"My goal is to begin building simple web applications into my pre-existing static XHTML pages."
Let's look at how you'd do this in Django.
Create a Django project.
Create a Django app.
Transform your XTHML pages into Django templates. Pull out the dynamic content and put in {{ somevariable }} markers. Depending on what the dynamic content is, this can be simple or rather complex.
Define URL to View function mappings in your urls.py file.
Define view functions in your views.py file. These view functions create the dynamic content that goes in the template, and which template to render.
At that point, you should be able to start the server, start a browser, pick a URL and see your template rendered.
"write a basic message board in Python."
Let's look at how you'd do this in Django.
Create a Django project.
Create a Django app.
Define your data model in models.py
Write unit tests in tests.py. Test your model's methods to be sure they all work properly.
Play with the built-in admin pages.
Create Django templates.
Define URL to View function mappings in your urls.py file.
Define view functions in your views.py file. These view functions create the dynamic content that goes in the template, and which template to render.
Take a look at CherryPy. It's a nice http framework.
It depends on what you want to achieve,
a) do you want to just write a web application without worrying too much abt what goes in the background, how request are being handled, or templates being rendered than go for a goo webframework, there are many choices simple http server is NOT one of them. e.g. use django, turbogears, webpy, cheerpy, pylons etc etc
see http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks for full list
b) if you want to develope a simple web framework from start so that you understand internals and improve you knowledge of python, then I will suggest use simple http server
see
how can you create a URL scheme so that URLs are dispatched to correct python function,
see how can you render a html
template e.g. containing place
holder variables $title etc which
you can convert to string using
string.Template
b) would be difficult but interesting exercise to do, a) will get you started and you may be writing web apps in couple of days