Setup Your First Django Project

Today we are going to create our first django project. We’ll assume you have Python Installed already. If not, you can see our this post Python Installation .

Create a virtual environment

The venv module provides support for creating lightweight “virtual environments” with their own site directories, optionally isolated from system site directories. Each virtual environment has its own Python binary (which matches the version of the binary that was used to create this environment) and can have its own independent set of installed Python packages in its site directories. to know more details about venv visit this link

Creation of virtual environments is done by executing the command venv:

python3 -m venv /path/to/new/virtual/environment

For example

python3 -m venv env

Activate the virtual environment

If you are using windows execute this command to activate virtual environment

env\Scripts\activate

If you are using linux/ unix/ macOS execute this command to activate virtual environment

source env/bin/activate

Install Django

After you’ve created and activated a virtual environment, enter the command

pip install Django

Creating a project

If this is your first time using Django, you’ll have to take care of some initial setup. Namely, you’ll need to auto-generate some code that establishes a Django project – a collection of settings for an instance of Django, including database configuration, Django-specific options and application-specific settings.

django-admin startproject mysite

Let’s look at what startproject created:

mysite/
    manage.py
    mysite/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        asgi.py
        wsgi.py

From the command line go to that mysite using cd command

cd mysite

The development server

Let’s verify your Django project works

python manage.py runserver

Now that the server’s running, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ with your web browser. You’ll see a “Congratulations!” page, with a rocket taking off. It worked!

Creating the Polls app

To create your app, make sure you’re in the same directory as manage.py and type this command:

python manage.py startapp polls

That’ll create a directory polls, which is laid out like this:

polls/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    apps.py
    migrations/
        __init__.py
    models.py
    tests.py
    views.py

The poll application will be stored under this directory structure.

Register into setting.py file

Now you need to register you app name into project setting.py file under INSTALLED_APPS section.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    
    'polls',
]

Write your first view

Let’s write the first view. Open the file polls/views.py and put the following Python code in it:

from django.http import HttpResponse


def index(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.")

In Django, this is the most basic view. To call the view, we must first map it to a URL, which necessitates the use of a URLconf.

Build a file called urls.py in the polls directory to create a URLconf.

In the polls/urls.py file include the following code:

from django.urls import path

from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
]

The next step is to point the root URLconf at the polls.urls module. In mysite/urls.py, add an import for django.urls.include and insert an include() in the urlpatterns list, so you have:

from django.urls import include, path

urlpatterns = [
    path('polls/', include('polls.urls')),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

You have now wired an index view into the URLconf. Verify it’s working with the following command:

python manage.py runserver

That is it for today, hope it helps. If you have any suggestion for this article please make a comment in comment section below.

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