Django Create Project

Starting your first Django web application

🚀 What is a Django Project?

A Django project is a collection of settings and configurations for your web application. It serves as the container for your entire website, including databases, apps, and deployment settings. 

# Create your first Django project
django-admin startproject myproject
cd myproject
python manage.py runserver

Key Project Components

⚙️

Settings

Configuration for your project 

DEBUG = True
ALLOWED_HOSTS = []
🔗

URLs

Route requests to views 

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

WSGI

Web server gateway interface 

application = get_wsgi_application()
🎯

Manage.py

Command-line utility 

python manage.py runserver

🔹 Installing Django

Before creating a project, you need to install Django. Use pip, Python's package manager, to install Django on your system. 

# Install Django using pip
pip install django

# Verify installation
python -m django --version

Output:

5.0.0

🔹 Creating Your First Project

Use the django-admin command to create a new project. This generates all necessary files and folders for your Django application. 

# Create a new Django project
django-admin startproject mysite

# Navigate into the project
cd mysite

# Run the development server
python manage.py runserver

Output:

Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Quit the server with CTRL-BREAK.

🔹 Project Structure Overview

After creating a project, Django generates several important files: 

mysite/
    manage.py
    mysite/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        asgi.py
        wsgi.py
  • manage.py: Command-line tool for project management
  • settings.py: Project configuration and settings
  • urls.py: URL routing declarations
  • wsgi.py: Entry point for WSGI servers

🔹 Running the Development Server

Django includes a lightweight development server for testing your application locally during development. 

# Start server on default port (8000)
python manage.py runserver

# Start server on custom port
python manage.py runserver 8080

# Start server on specific IP and port
python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

💡 Tip:

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser to see the Django welcome page!

🔹 Basic Settings Configuration

The settings.py file contains important configurations for your project. Here are some essential settings you'll work with: 

# settings.py

# Debug mode (set to False in production)
DEBUG = True

# Allowed hosts for your application
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['localhost', '127.0.0.1']

# Installed applications
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

# Database configuration
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
    }
}

🧠 Test Your Knowledge

What command creates a new Django project?