This is a great book for practitioners of Django to learn best practices. This is not a beginner book or a tutorial at all, so if you are new to Django it would be better to learn some Django first before getting this book.
The authors know Django really well and explain concepts in a clear and concise fashion. Both authors being ice-cream lovers decided to do illustrations in terms of ice cream analogies... it sounds crazy for a programming book, but it actually worked pretty well. Additionally, the writing style was lighthearted which prevents the book from being too dry.
As for technical details the book is really solid. The beginning chapters are on proper Django setup and topics such as when to use Class Based Views or Function Based Views. I liked the authors state their own opinion and also present opposing views from other Django contributors. Later chapters cover things like deployment, security, and continuous integration.
I also learned quite a lot about other technologies in the book which they mention. For example, in the deployment chapters they present the trade-offs of Docker, SaltStack, Ansible, Puppet, and Chef. These high level comparisons gave me a better picture of how a real world Django project works.
ISBN-13: 978-0981467344
ISBN-10: 0981467342
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Customer reviews
A definitive required reading, and a definitive required purchase for any developer or shop taking Django development seriously.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2015
Disclaimer: Two of my projects are featured in the book. I've taken extra time to write a comprehensive review on the merits of the book beyond the inclusion of my projects.–I have to admit that my first thought when opening the package at the post office was that this book looked intimidating (496 pages and the physical size of a small phone book). However Daniel and Audrey have managed to present all of its material in a very easy to digest manner. I'm not a native English speaker and can appreciate the efforts they have gone to use simple, everyday words, and analogies to transmit a lot of material.This book is not meant as an introduction or tutorial to learn Django, however once you know the basics you will find that the book does a very good job of catering to the beginner, intermediate and advanced developer. That's something not easy to achieve.As the title says, this book covers not just the technology of Django, but also the best practices from those in the daily trenches of web development using it; for one, it is a great way to avoid the pitfalls others have fallen into.While not a tutorial, this book is very good at filling the gaps of the official documentation. It is also structured in a way where it can be read at random: a chapter is not dependent on topics of other chapters. It can be read in sequence to learn new things or used as a reference for when you are stuck in a design decision.The topics are very varied ranging from project structure, testing, but also delving into the dark places of Django, such as explaining why it is better to use 'force_text' than just an unicode cast. I won't spoil the surprise, buy the book!I'm very satisfied with this book, it offers many good starting points, recommendations for improving your existing code, practices and technical tidbits you will only understand after getting bit by them in production, which I've already painted with my highlighting marker :) This is a book you will revisit many times during several project, just that alone offers great value for the price.In closing, a definitive required reading, and a definitive required purchase for any developer or shop taking Django development seriously.
Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2015
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Top reviews from other countries
Owen
I had this book recommended more than once whilst I was at DjangoCon Europe ...
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 22, 2015
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Put on 2lbs by the end of the book!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 12, 2015Daniel Carter
2 scoops 1 django master
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 8, 2015
