The next step to continue with the Django project is to add some models. Just follow the steps bellow to have them migrated in the database. You must have your virtual environment activated (remember, in your Powershell or terminal just run: )

\flask\Script\activate

Let’s go to our directory app “blogs” with our favourite IDE or text editor, in my case inside “blog”, in models.py of your app, insert under #Create your models here (obviously he,he,he) something like that, in any case whatever you need to be in your model, in my case :

class Entry(models.Model):
    """An entry for your blog"""
    title = models.CharField(max_length=400)
    date_added = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    text = models.TextField()

    def __str__(self):
        """Return a string representation of the model."""
        return self.title

To see the different kinds of fields that you can use in a model :

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/ref/models/fields/

The next step is to modify the database so it can store information related to our model Entry and apply our migration. So, from the terminal, we will run the follow commands:

python manage.py makemigrations blogs
python manage.py migrate

Whenever you want to modify the data that your Project (Blog) manages we’ll follow these three steps:

Modify models.py
Call makemigrations on our app (blogs)
Tell Django to migrate the project

Let’s add another model just to show for example, Tags. It’s a relation of many_to_many, so a lot of Entries can use many Tags, and these Tags can be used for many Entries. In our case we need to modify our Entry model and add Tag model.

class Entry(models.Model):
    """An entry for your blog"""
    title = models.CharField(max_length=400)
    date_added = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    text = models.TextField()
    tags = models.ManyToManyField('Tag', related_name='tags')

    def __str__(self):
        """Return a string representation of the model."""
        return self.title

class Tag(models.Model):
    """An entry for your blog"""
    tag_name = models.CharField(max_length=400)

    def __str__(self):
        """Return a string representation of the model."""
        return self.tag_name

Remember, after the modification to run on your terminal the next two mandatory steps, to see your modifications:

python manage.py makemigrations blogs
python manage.py migrate

In your admin area you can easily add data to your models. Just login as superuser and there you go: http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin

I started with Python last month, just to see what is the fuss about it. I can see how simple it is and that makes it quite powerful, but coming from Ruby and Ruby on Rails, I can see serious resemblance between both of them, and now with Django more of the same. It’s fine, it’s not a critic, not bad feelings, it’s just an observation, if you “jump” from one to another it will not be a “cliff jumping” just a “mud puddle” kind of jump.

Here the steps to have a Django project kicking in no-time. You must have previously python 3 installed ( I followed these steps ). I did in a Windows 10 machine, so this my list of steps. Open a Powershell with Administrator rights and start typing:

# Create directory for your new project
mkdir blog
cd blog

# Create a virtual environment for your project
python -m venv ll_env
ll_env\Scripts\activate 
# to stop it 
deactivate

# Install Django
pip install django

# Create the project in Django ATTENTION: Don't forget the . at the end!!!
django-admin startproject blog .

# Creating the database SQLite
python manage.py migrate

# Viewing the project 
python manage.py runserver

# go to
http://127.0.0.1:8000

# Tada!!!!

# Create an App inside your project
# Your virtual environment must be activated
ll_env\Scripts\activate 
python manage.py startapp blogs

You will have to modify settings.py in under your project “Blog” to add your app, so it looks like:

..... Snip ..... 
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # My apps
    'blogs',
    
    # Default django apps
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
..... Snip .....

# Let's create a superuser for our admin part
python manage.py createsuperuser 
(enter username, and password of your choice, the email is totally optional)

And now you can login in your app as superuser in the admin area : http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/

And now it’s when you start creating models, views, templates, etc.

Tag: Python

Django Modeling

Django Hands on