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Web Development with Django Cookbook
Over 70 practical recipes to create multilingual, responsive, and scalable websites with Django If you have created websites with Django, but you want to sharpen your knowledge and learn some good approaches for how to treat different aspects of web development, you should definitely read this book. It is intended for intermediate and professional Django users who need to build projects which must be multilingual, functional on devices of different screen sizes, and which scale over time.
Django is easy to learn and solves all types of web development problems and questions, providing Python developers an easy solution to web-application development. With a wealth of third-party modules available, you'll be able to create a highly customizable web application with this powerful framework. Web Development with Django Cookbook will guide you through all web development processes with the Django framework. You will get started with the virtual environment and configuration of the project, and then you will learn how to define a database structure with reusable components. Find out how to tweak the administration to make the website editors happy. This book deals with some important third-party modules necessary for fully equipped web development.
Django is easy to learn and solves all types of web development problems and questions, providing Python developers an easy solution to web-application development. With a wealth of third-party modules available, you'll be able to create a highly customizable web application with this powerful framework. Web Development with Django Cookbook will guide you through all web development processes with the Django framework. You will get started with the virtual environment and configuration of the project, and then you will learn how to define a database structure with reusable components. Find out how to tweak the administration to make the website editors happy. This book deals with some important third-party modules necessary for fully equipped web development.
296 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 16, 2014
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63 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
November 14, 2014
Web Development with Django Cookbook is aimed at Intermediate to Advanced Django developers. I have been using Django for approximately six months, but would still class myself as a beginner, due to it being my first framework. My main goals in reading this book was to improve my knowledge of django and to learn beneficial 'recipes', as it is a cookbook. Overall, the book allowed me to achieve both goals. Through learning highly practical Django 'recipes', that I have not read online, and by improving my knowledge my explaining how the recipes work.
The book consists of over 70 recipes. The first beneficial recipe that I was able to implement within my code, was in Chapter 2 which introduces you to mixins and the benefits of multiple inheritance. Other sections that I found particularly beneficial were the PDF section, the meta tags mixin recipe, the crispy-forms recipe, the recipe that filters search results based on a specific object, importing data from a csv file, and the recipe for creating and using a fabric script for deployment.
As I previously said, I would class myself as a beginner Django developer, but it appears to me that the book recommends many good practices, such as using version control, working in an isolated environment and tracking files. However, one exception that was not in line with best practices, was using a local settings file with a try, except branch at the bottom of the settings.py file, which was not placed in version control.
Some of the recipes, were however difficult for me to understand as I had no previous experience with them. I felt that this was a common theme for me within the book. For example, chapter 7 deals with Djangos CMS, and offers many different recipes for it. I had not previously used the CMS package, and thus had to consult the official tutorial to get a better understanding of the package. The author does however state the intended audience at the start of the book, and suggests that you have experience using the various aspects of the framework.
I feel that more experienced Django developers would benefit from this book the most. less experienced Django developers can still benefit from the many practical and detailed recipes. Though they may have to consult 3rd party sources to fully benefit from this book. I feel the benefits of this book will only grow as I become more experienced with Django. I would highly recommend this book to developers who are familiar with the various aspects of the framework.
The book consists of over 70 recipes. The first beneficial recipe that I was able to implement within my code, was in Chapter 2 which introduces you to mixins and the benefits of multiple inheritance. Other sections that I found particularly beneficial were the PDF section, the meta tags mixin recipe, the crispy-forms recipe, the recipe that filters search results based on a specific object, importing data from a csv file, and the recipe for creating and using a fabric script for deployment.
As I previously said, I would class myself as a beginner Django developer, but it appears to me that the book recommends many good practices, such as using version control, working in an isolated environment and tracking files. However, one exception that was not in line with best practices, was using a local settings file with a try, except branch at the bottom of the settings.py file, which was not placed in version control.
Some of the recipes, were however difficult for me to understand as I had no previous experience with them. I felt that this was a common theme for me within the book. For example, chapter 7 deals with Djangos CMS, and offers many different recipes for it. I had not previously used the CMS package, and thus had to consult the official tutorial to get a better understanding of the package. The author does however state the intended audience at the start of the book, and suggests that you have experience using the various aspects of the framework.
I feel that more experienced Django developers would benefit from this book the most. less experienced Django developers can still benefit from the many practical and detailed recipes. Though they may have to consult 3rd party sources to fully benefit from this book. I feel the benefits of this book will only grow as I become more experienced with Django. I would highly recommend this book to developers who are familiar with the various aspects of the framework.
July 11, 2016
First point: This book is terribly outdated. It focus on Django 1.6, which is at least 3 versions behind the current one (at the time of this review). 1.6 is so old that you can't find its documentation on the Django Project page anymore.
Second point: This book is terrible. I mean, one of the very first examples it talks about a mixin with creation date and modified date, which is pretty damn easy with Django, but instead of using "auto_now=True" and/or "auto_now_add=True", it overrides save() on the model. Now terrible enough? Later in the book, it creates a templatetag to access model directly, which completely obliterates the MVT (model-view-template) model of Django. Still not terrible enough? Again in the very first part of the book, to prevent browser caching issues, it gives a recipe for using the SVN revision in the static path; the wrong part of it is: a) it means you'll have to have SVN in your server instead of using proper setup.py to deliver your apps, b) it does a system() call, which is slow, c) there is a prop in SVN which allows you to use "$Id$" to automatically save the revision on commit (pretty much like CSV) and d) If you're having caching issues, that's a problem with your webserver, not Django.
(I won't even talk about long chapters talking about MPTT with examples either don't show the tool properly or MPTT is so useless one could replace it with a single ForeignKey.)
The whole book feels like someone searched for "django" on StackOverflow and dropped the first answers.
In the end, the book is only good for giving you some ideas of what is available with Django, not how to properly develop a Django app.
Second point: This book is terrible. I mean, one of the very first examples it talks about a mixin with creation date and modified date, which is pretty damn easy with Django, but instead of using "auto_now=True" and/or "auto_now_add=True", it overrides save() on the model. Now terrible enough? Later in the book, it creates a templatetag to access model directly, which completely obliterates the MVT (model-view-template) model of Django. Still not terrible enough? Again in the very first part of the book, to prevent browser caching issues, it gives a recipe for using the SVN revision in the static path; the wrong part of it is: a) it means you'll have to have SVN in your server instead of using proper setup.py to deliver your apps, b) it does a system() call, which is slow, c) there is a prop in SVN which allows you to use "$Id$" to automatically save the revision on commit (pretty much like CSV) and d) If you're having caching issues, that's a problem with your webserver, not Django.
(I won't even talk about long chapters talking about MPTT with examples either don't show the tool properly or MPTT is so useless one could replace it with a single ForeignKey.)
The whole book feels like someone searched for "django" on StackOverflow and dropped the first answers.
In the end, the book is only good for giving you some ideas of what is available with Django, not how to properly develop a Django app.
December 3, 2014
I feel this cookbook offers something to a lot of developers in the Django space. If you are a Django guru, you may find that the book dosn't offer you enough to justify the purchase.
Since im fairly new to using Django, I actually found a lot of the code to actually be useful. I found chapters 3-5 (Forms/Views/Templates/Custom Tags) and 9 (Data import and export) to provide a lot of information that would either be immediately useful or useful as a reference down the road.
There are a few things that I didn't like about the book, but they are small issues that may only be a problem with a pdf/ebook version of the book. I prefer to have comments in the code explaining how this code is actually working, instead we have a section after the code explaining how the code works. The way this is handled in a pdf/ebook make following the code a little more difficult.
Also be aware that this book is for Django 1.6, with 1.7 being the current major release.
I see the book offering value to almost everyone, but your experience with Django will effect the end value you get from this book.
Since im fairly new to using Django, I actually found a lot of the code to actually be useful. I found chapters 3-5 (Forms/Views/Templates/Custom Tags) and 9 (Data import and export) to provide a lot of information that would either be immediately useful or useful as a reference down the road.
There are a few things that I didn't like about the book, but they are small issues that may only be a problem with a pdf/ebook version of the book. I prefer to have comments in the code explaining how this code is actually working, instead we have a section after the code explaining how the code works. The way this is handled in a pdf/ebook make following the code a little more difficult.
Also be aware that this book is for Django 1.6, with 1.7 being the current major release.
I see the book offering value to almost everyone, but your experience with Django will effect the end value you get from this book.
January 8, 2015
[I received a review copy of this book at no cost to myself!]
Django is the big name when it comes to python web frameworks. Like it or not if you use python you almost certainly know of it. But Django isn't only a big name it is an extensive framework with so much functionality it can be daunting.
So it comes that I am reviewing another cookbook: "Web Development with Django Cookbook" by Aidas Bendoraitis.
The book covers Django 1.6 and although the current version is 1.7 the author makes a point of mentioning when something is significantly different (South support for example).
The recipes run the gamut from setup and project structure, through template tags and models, to data import/export and deployment. There are even recipes covering Django CMS.
I'll be honest and say I haven't worked through every recipe but those that I have worked through were well presented and accurate. This is definitely a book I will keep by my side while working on Django projects.
Django is the big name when it comes to python web frameworks. Like it or not if you use python you almost certainly know of it. But Django isn't only a big name it is an extensive framework with so much functionality it can be daunting.
So it comes that I am reviewing another cookbook: "Web Development with Django Cookbook" by Aidas Bendoraitis.
The book covers Django 1.6 and although the current version is 1.7 the author makes a point of mentioning when something is significantly different (South support for example).
The recipes run the gamut from setup and project structure, through template tags and models, to data import/export and deployment. There are even recipes covering Django CMS.
I'll be honest and say I haven't worked through every recipe but those that I have worked through were well presented and accurate. This is definitely a book I will keep by my side while working on Django projects.
June 5, 2015
Wonderful book
It's exactly what I need to customize Django admin and have deeper understanding of the Django framework. Highly recommend it to developers.
It's exactly what I need to customize Django admin and have deeper understanding of the Django framework. Highly recommend it to developers.
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June 19, 2015Location: GG6 IRC
Accession No: DL027186
Accession No: DL027186
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews