Suggested Readings for Django

An annotated list of suggested readings for the Django Web Framework.

Django Models and Testing

These readings will support your work on the Data Model for our Django Imager website.

• Django Models API
• Django Model Managers
• Django’s Signal Framework, Built-In Signals and Signal Handling (You’ll also want to read up on using the new App Config system to register signals and signal handlers)
• Django Testing (familiarize yourself both with writing and running tests and with the tools Django provides for testing.
• Using Dynamic Test Fixtures with Factory Boy (in particular pay attention to using Factory Boy with Django)

Django Views

For your tasks this week, you’ll need to create a number of views in Django. Please refer to the following readings for help in answering your quesitons:

• Writing Views in Django
• An overview of Django’s Class-Based Views
• Full API Documentation for Class-Based Views

You may also wish to refer to the following materials for help in writing templates in Django:

• An overview of the Django Template Language
• Django Templates Configuration (including configuration of template lookup and engine selection)
• The built-in template tags and filters in Django
• Creating your own custom template tags and filters

Django Forms

To support creating and editing objects in Django, you’ll need to learn about Django Forms. Here are some readings to keep in mind as you progress:

• Start by learning how to work with forms in general
• Follow that up with reading about ModelForms and what they provide
• Make sure you understand form and field validation so you can ensure proper data is submitted
• Particularly complex forms, or forms which require javascript or special css, will need to utilize form assets
• You’ll want to keep a reference open for the Forms API
• Keep in mind that the custom form field you imagine may already have been created and check the Forms category on http://www.djangopackages.com