Things I wish I'd known about Django

Talk I gave at July's (2015) London Django Meetup. See https://github.com/djangolondon/The-London-Django-Meetup-Group/blob/master/meetups/2015-07-14.md

Transcript

1. Things I wish I’d known about Django A talk all about me (sorry) James Cooke // The London Django Meetup
2. About me • Backend developer • Accidental web dev: o Five years of PHP o Four years of Piotr saying “check out Django” o Client driven dev o Learning / experimentation debt • Django was my first experience of Python
3. Better Python > Better Django • “Magic” Django functions are just powerful Python features. • Accessors, decorators, comprehensions and generators.
4. Deployment isn’t `scp` • Non-trivial deployment. File-orientated is not enough. • modpython support deprecated when I started. • WSGI needs some workers - you’re a devops now :D
5. Django’s not rails Adjusting how your Django install works is standard and expected. e.g: • Use other libraries. • Extend ORM / object managers. • Templating. • Class based views.
6. Django lets me screw up my data `Model.save != Model.full_clean` Many routes data can take into DB: • Form validation in view • View code building objects • Data migrations • Ad hoc queries in shell.
7. Point five `from django.test import TestCase`
8. Community If I’d know it was this good I’d have been here sooner: • Great plugins / tools: South, Mezzanine / CMS, caches, integrations. • High quality community answers • Generally built on strong Python community (I think)
9. Summary • If you’re new: Jump in (sooner) • If you’re here now: Don’t fear the magic (use the source) • If you’re pro: Spread the word :D Thanks… got questions? @jamesfublo