Practical Django Projects (Pratical Projects) [Paperback]

James Bennett (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 26, 2008 | ISBN-10: 1590599969 | ISBN-13: 978-1590599969 | Edition: 1

Build a Django content management system, blog, and social networking site with James Bennett as he introduces the popular Django framework. You’ll work through the development of each project, implementing and running the applications while learning new features along the way.

Web frameworks are playing a major role in the creation of today’s most compelling web applications, because they automate many of the tedious tasks, allowing developers to instead focus on providing users with creative and powerful features. Python developers have been particularly fortunate in this area, having been able to take advantage of Django, a very popular open source web framework whose stated goal is to “make it easier to build better web applications more quickly with less code.”

Practical Django Projects is the first book to introduce this popular framework by way of a series of real–world projects.

What you’ll learn

• Capitalize upon Django’s well–defined framework architecture to build web applications faster than ever before
• Learn by doing by working through the creation of three real–world projects, including a content management system, blog, and social networking site
• Build user–friendly web sites with well–structured URLs, session tracking, and syndication options
• Let Django handle tedious tasks such as database interaction while you focus on building compelling applications

Who this book is for

Web developers seeking to use the powerful Django framework to build powerful web sites.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

James Bennett is a web developer for the World Company of Lawrence, Kansas, and is a major contributor to the Django project. His current role within the Django community is as the software project's release manager.

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Apress; 1 edition (June 26, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1590599969
• ISBN-13: 978-1590599969
• Product Dimensions: 7.1 x 0.7 x 9.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,078,485 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Wait for the next edition of this book August 11, 2008

By Rob

Format:Paperback

This book is a solid, practically-oriented introduction to Django, but be warned: the code in the book fails with Django 1.0. This is an important caveat because you cannot progress through the exercises unless you know the gotchas and how to modify the code accordingly. Some of the incompatibilities are quite major.

I found that the book pitches a bit low for an experienced developers and it's thin on discussion of the meat of what's going on under the hood. A minor issue with the book is the author's insistence on "admonishing" you literally every second page. You see, calling things "admonitions" one of the secret signs that Python nerds use to show that they're part of that very special little gang of elite hardcore "Pythonistas". For the rest of us, it's just grating (or maybe I'm just not dope enough to be a Pythonista, yo. Y'know what I'm saying, bro? Word.)

Issues aside, I do like its very hands-on approach and I'm betting that the next edition will be a 4.5 star book.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but poorly timed August 14, 2008

By Justin Lilly

Format:Paperback

This book is a great book. 2 nits. One big, one small.

Nit #1: "Admonitions" seems a bit contrived.

Nit #2: This book should have either been released earlier or released 3 months later. The game is changing with 1.0 and all previous books will require fixes and updates to work. This increases the barrier to entry for newbies and should be rectified as soon as possible.

[Update: Word is there will be a hg repo for updated code samples. Now retracting Nit #2]

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Not for Beginners August 26, 2008

By Ms. Jenifer Hanen

Format:Paperback

Another reviewer noted that this was the perfect book for beginners/newbies. It is not. As stated in the book and on the back cover, it is for intermediate folk.

The book makes quite a few assumptions about the reader's level of Django and development experience, as a result it can be a very frustrating experience for a beginner.

Please also note, as other reviewers have noted, that the book's code examples are for Django .9x (update: written for 0.96) and not for 1.0. Apress, the publisher, has not given any updates to the errata nor do they have the book's source code posted. So, if you are not an intermediate python programmer or an intermediate Django developer, you may find yourself throwing this book or your computer in frustration.

Other than that, if I could just figure out which version of Django it is written for, I would love this book.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but already dated. August 25, 2008

By Brad K. Montgomery

Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase

This is a well-written book that is fairly easy to read. If you're new to Django (or web development in general), this book will teach you how things fit together. There are lots of code examples, and the author walks you through building an app, and then puts the complete code at the end of the section (which I like).

The code in this book seems to be built using the 0.96 release of Django. I started learning with the svn version (leading up to 1.0), and a large number of things work differently than explained in the book. If you buy this book and want to use version 1.0, you'll often need to read through Django's documentation, too. Also, the author periodically explains some basic python syntax in an effort to make the book more accessible to new python users. In my opinion, this could be removed from the book in order to spend more effort explaining Django.

Overall: A good book. I'm glad I bought it.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Ars Technica review of Practical Django Projects July 11, 2008

By Clinton Ecker

Format:Paperback

The final, and best, section of this book covers a few topics that have personally revolutionized my understanding and how I think about developing my Django applications. James goes to great lengths to explain the philosophy behind Django's concept of reusable applications.

The idea here is that one should strive to develop small, tightly-focused, and loosely coupled applications (or modules) that can be plugged into any application to add instant functionality. In fact, a large portion of what makes Django such an attractive framework--it's auto-generated admin interface, and copious add-on library--are developed in this exact same fashion. It's one of the reason's Django is so powerful and easy to adopt.

With few Django books on the market at this point, I would recommend Practical Django Projects to anyone who has at least cursory experience with web development or web frameworks. By going through the two substantial projects in this book, a competent developer can hone their Django skills to a level that some have reached only after months or years. This book is short for the amount of useful information it will impart on you; at a thin 256 pages, you'll be speeding through chapters at a nice brisk pace that satisfied my scatterbrained personality.

[...]

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Must Have Book When Learning Django July 22, 2008

By Jason Broyles

Format:Paperback

If you found that you have worked through the tutorial on the official Django website and are still wanting more, this is the book to get. I started working with Django about 2 months ago and first purchased The Definitive Guide to Django. I am not to familiar with any type of web or other programming and definitely not familiar with web frameworks. After working through the guide and reading some of the online documentation, I found that I was still confused in some areas.

Make sure you work through some of the basics of Django before reading this book. While it does take you step by step through making different projects, you may be confused if you have never seen Django before. There are a ton of great applications out there already developed with Django and this book takes you in to a few examples of them.

In my eyes, James Bennett is the leading authority on Django tutorials. I find myself finding more and more great examples on his personal blog every day. I would highly recommend this book to anyone wanting to learn more about Django.