===================================== Writing your first Django app, part 1 ===================================== Let's learn by example. Throughout this tutorial, we'll walk you through the creation of a basic poll application. It'll consist of two parts: * A public site that lets people view polls and vote in them. * An admin site that lets you add, change, and delete polls. We'll assume you have :doc:`Django installed ` already. You can tell Django is installed and which version by running the following command in a shell prompt (indicated by the $ prefix): .. console:: $ python -m django --version If Django is installed, you should see the version of your installation. If it isn't, you'll get an error telling "No module named django". This tutorial is written for Django |version|, which supports Python 3.10 and later. If the Django version doesn't match, you can refer to the tutorial for your version of Django by using the version switcher at the bottom right corner of this page, or update Django to the newest version. If you're using an older version of Python, check :ref:`faq-python-version-support` to find a compatible version of Django. See :doc:`How to install Django ` for advice on how to remove older versions of Django and install a newer one. .. admonition:: Where to get help: If you're having trouble going through this tutorial, please head over to the :doc:`Getting Help` section of the FAQ. 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 :term:`project` -- a collection of settings for an instance of Django, including database configuration, Django-specific options and application-specific settings. From the command line, ``cd`` into a directory where you'd like to store your code, then run the following command: .. console:: $ django-admin startproject mysite This will create a ``mysite`` directory in your current directory. If it didn't work, see :ref:`troubleshooting-django-admin`. .. note:: You'll need to avoid naming projects after built-in Python or Django components. In particular, this means you should avoid using names like ``django`` (which will conflict with Django itself) or ``test`` (which conflicts with a built-in Python package). Let's look at what :djadmin:`startproject` created: .. code-block:: text mysite/ manage.py mysite/ __init__.py settings.py urls.py asgi.py wsgi.py These files are: * The outer :file:`mysite/` root directory is a container for your project. Its name doesn't matter to Django; you can rename it to anything you like. * :file:`manage.py`: A command-line utility that lets you interact with this Django project in various ways. You can read all the details about :file:`manage.py` in :doc:`/ref/django-admin`. * The inner :file:`mysite/` directory is the actual Python package for your project. Its name is the Python package name you'll need to use to import anything inside it (e.g. ``mysite.urls``). * :file:`mysite/__init__.py`: An empty file that tells Python that this directory should be considered a Python package. If you're a Python beginner, read :ref:`more about packages ` in the official Python docs. * :file:`mysite/settings.py`: Settings/configuration for this Django project. :doc:`/topics/settings` will tell you all about how settings work. * :file:`mysite/urls.py`: The URL declarations for this Django project; a "table of contents" of your Django-powered site. You can read more about URLs in :doc:`/topics/http/urls`. * :file:`mysite/asgi.py`: An entry-point for ASGI-compatible web servers to serve your project. See :doc:`/howto/deployment/asgi/index` for more details. * :file:`mysite/wsgi.py`: An entry-point for WSGI-compatible web servers to serve your project. See :doc:`/howto/deployment/wsgi/index` for more details. The development server ====================== Let's verify your Django project works. Change into the outer :file:`mysite` directory, if you haven't already, and run the following commands: .. console:: $ python manage.py runserver You'll see the following output on the command line: .. parsed-literal:: Performing system checks... System check identified no issues (0 silenced). You have unapplied migrations; your app may not work properly until they are applied. Run 'python manage.py migrate' to apply them. |today| - 15:50:53 Django version |version|, using settings 'mysite.settings' Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ Quit the server with CONTROL-C. WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production setting. Use a production WSGI or ASGI server instead. For more information on production servers see: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/stable/howto/deployment/ .. note:: Ignore the warning about unapplied database migrations for now; we'll deal with the database shortly. 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! You've started the Django development server, a lightweight web server written purely in Python. We've included this with Django so you can develop things rapidly, without having to deal with configuring a production server -- such as Apache -- until you're ready for production. Now's a good time to note: **don't** use this server in anything resembling a production environment. It's intended only for use while developing. (We're in the business of making web frameworks, not web servers.) (To serve the site on a different port, see the :djadmin:`runserver` reference.) .. admonition:: Automatic reloading of :djadmin:`runserver` The development server automatically reloads Python code for each request as needed. You don't need to restart the server for code changes to take effect. However, some actions like adding files don't trigger a restart, so you'll have to restart the server in these cases. Creating the Polls app ====================== Now that your environment -- a "project" -- is set up, you're set to start doing work. Each application you write in Django consists of a Python package that follows a certain convention. Django comes with a utility that automatically generates the basic directory structure of an app, so you can focus on writing code rather than creating directories. .. admonition:: Projects vs. apps What's the difference between a project and an app? An app is a web application that does something -- e.g., a blog system, a database of public records or a small poll app. A project is a collection of configuration and apps for a particular website. A project can contain multiple apps. An app can be in multiple projects. Your apps can live anywhere on your :ref:`Python path `. In this tutorial, we'll create our poll app in the same directory as your :file:`manage.py` file so that it can be imported as its own top-level module, rather than a submodule of ``mysite``. To create your app, make sure you're in the same directory as :file:`manage.py` and type this command: .. console:: $ python manage.py startapp polls That'll create a directory :file:`polls`, which is laid out like this: .. code-block:: text polls/ __init__.py admin.py apps.py migrations/ __init__.py models.py tests.py views.py This directory structure will house the poll application. Write your first view ===================== Let's write the first view. Open the file ``polls/views.py`` and put the following Python code in it: .. code-block:: python :caption: ``polls/views.py`` from django.http import HttpResponse def index(request): return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.") This is the most basic view possible in Django. To access it in a browser, we need to map it to a URL - and for this we need to define a URL configuration, or "URLconf" for short. These URL configurations are defined inside each Django app, and they are Python files named ``urls.py``. To define a URLconf for the ``polls`` app, create a file ``polls/urls.py`` with the following content: .. code-block:: python :caption: ``polls/urls.py`` from django.urls import path from . import views urlpatterns = [ path("", views.index, name="index"), ] Your app directory should now look like: .. code-block:: text polls/ __init__.py admin.py apps.py migrations/ __init__.py models.py tests.py urls.py views.py The next step is to configure the root URLconf in the ``mysite`` project to include the URLconf defined in ``polls.urls``. To do this, add an import for ``django.urls.include`` in ``mysite/urls.py`` and insert an :func:`~django.urls.include` in the ``urlpatterns`` list, so you have: .. code-block:: python :caption: ``mysite/urls.py`` from django.contrib import admin from django.urls import include, path urlpatterns = [ path("polls/", include("polls.urls")), path("admin/", admin.site.urls), ] The :func:`~django.urls.include` function allows referencing other URLconfs. Whenever Django encounters :func:`~django.urls.include`, it chops off whatever part of the URL matched up to that point and sends the remaining string to the included URLconf for further processing. The idea behind :func:`~django.urls.include` is to make it easy to plug-and-play URLs. Since polls are in their own URLconf (``polls/urls.py``), they can be placed under "/polls/", or under "/fun_polls/", or under "/content/polls/", or any other path root, and the app will still work. .. admonition:: When to use :func:`~django.urls.include()` You should always use ``include()`` when you include other URL patterns. ``admin.site.urls`` is the only exception to this. You have now wired an ``index`` view into the URLconf. Verify it's working with the following command: .. console:: $ python manage.py runserver Go to http://localhost:8000/polls/ in your browser, and you should see the text "*Hello, world. You're at the polls index.*", which you defined in the ``index`` view. .. admonition:: Page not found? If you get an error page here, check that you're going to http://localhost:8000/polls/ and not http://localhost:8000/. The :func:`~django.urls.path` function is passed four arguments, two required: ``route`` and ``view``, and two optional: ``kwargs``, and ``name``. At this point, it's worth reviewing what these arguments are for. :func:`~django.urls.path` argument: ``route`` --------------------------------------------- ``route`` is a string that contains a URL pattern. When processing a request, Django starts at the first pattern in ``urlpatterns`` and makes its way down the list, comparing the requested URL against each pattern until it finds one that matches. Patterns don't search GET and POST parameters, or the domain name. For example, in a request to ``https://www.example.com/myapp/``, the URLconf will look for ``myapp/``. In a request to ``https://www.example.com/myapp/?page=3``, the URLconf will also look for ``myapp/``. :func:`~django.urls.path` argument: ``view`` -------------------------------------------- When Django finds a matching pattern, it calls the specified view function with an :class:`~django.http.HttpRequest` object as the first argument and any "captured" values from the route as keyword arguments. We'll give an example of this in a bit. :func:`~django.urls.path` argument: ``kwargs`` ---------------------------------------------- Arbitrary keyword arguments can be passed in a dictionary to the target view. We aren't going to use this feature of Django in the tutorial. :func:`~django.urls.path` argument: ``name`` -------------------------------------------- Naming your URL lets you refer to it unambiguously from elsewhere in Django, especially from within templates. This powerful feature allows you to make global changes to the URL patterns of your project while only touching a single file. When you're comfortable with the basic request and response flow, read :doc:`part 2 of this tutorial ` to start working with the database.