The Django Book

Chapter 2: Getting Started

We think it’s best to get a running start. The details and extent of the Django framework will be fleshed out in the later chapters, but for now, trust us, this chapter will be fun.

Installing Django is easy. Because Django runs anywhere Python does, Django can be configured in many ways. We cover the common scenarios for Django installations in this chapter. Chapter 20 covers deploying Django to production.

Installing Python

Django is written in 100% pure Python code, so you’ll need to install Python on your system. Django requires Python 2.3 or higher.

If you’re on Linux or Mac OS X, you probably already have Python installed. Type python at a command prompt (or in Terminal, in OS X). If you see something like this, then Python is installed:

Python 2.4.1 (#2, Mar 31 2005, 00:05:10)
[GCC 3.3 20030304 (Apple Computer, Inc. build 1666)] on darwin
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>>

Otherwise, if you see an error such as "command not found", you’ll have to download and install Python. See http://www.python.org/download/ to get started. The installation is fast and easy.

Installing Django

In this section, we cover two installation options: installing an official release and installing from Subversion.

Installing an Official Release

Most people will want to install the latest official release from http://www.djangoproject.com/download/. Django uses the standard Python distutils installation method, which in Linux land looks like this:

  1. Download the tarball, which will be named something like Django-0.96.tar.gz.
  2. tar xzvf Django-*.tar.gz.
  3. cd Django-*.
  4. sudo python setup.py install.

On Windows, we recommend using 7-Zip to handle all manner of compressed files, including .tar.gz. You can download 7-Zip from http://www.djangoproject.com/r/7zip/.

Change into some other directory and start python. If everything worked, you should be able to import the module django:

>>> import django
>>> django.VERSION
(0, 96, None)

Note

The Python interactive interpreter is a command-line program that lets you write a Python program interactively. To start it, just run the command python at the command line. Throughout this book, we feature example Python code that’s printed as if it’s being entered in the interactive interpreter. The triple greater-than signs (>>>) signify a Python prompt.

Installing Django from Subversion

If you want to work on the bleeding edge, or if you want to contribute code to Django itself, you should install Django from its Subversion repository.

Subversion is a free, open source revision-control system similar to CVS, and the Django team uses it to manage changes to the Django codebase. You can use a Subversion client to grab the very latest Django source code and, at any given time, you can update your local version of the Django code, known as your local checkout, to get the latest changes and improvements made by Django developers.

The latest and greatest Django development code is referred to as the trunk. The Django team runs production sites on trunk and strives to keep it stable.

To grab the latest Django trunk, follow these steps:

  1. Make sure you have a Subversion client installed. You can get the software free from http://subversion.tigris.org/, and you can find excellent documentation at http://svnbook.red-bean.com/.
  2. Check out the trunk using the command svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk djtrunk.
  3. Create site-packages/django.pth and add the djtrunk directory to it, or update your PYTHONPATH to point to djtrunk.
  4. Place djtrunk/django/bin on your system PATH. This directory includes management utilities such as django-admin.py.

Tip:

If .pth files are new to you, you can learn more about them at http://www.djangoproject.com/r/python/site-module/.

After downloading from Subversion and following the preceding steps, there’s no need to python setup.py install—you’ve just done the work by hand!

Because the Django trunk changes often with bug fixes and feature additions, you’ll probably want to update it every once in a while — or hourly, if you’re really obsessed. To update the code, just run the command svn update from within the djtrunk directory. When you run that command, Subversion will contact http://code.djangoproject.com, determine if any code has changed, and update your local version of the code with any changes that have been made since you last updated. It’s quite slick.

Setting Up a Database

Django’s only prerequisite is a working installation of Python. However, this book focuses on one of Django’s sweet spots, which is developing database-backed Web sites, so you’ll need to install a database server of some sort, for storing your data.

If you just want to get started playing with Django, skip ahead to the “Starting a Project” section—but trust us, you’ll want to install a database eventually. All of the examples in the book assume you have a database set up.

As of the time of this writing, Django supports three database engines:

Work is in progress to support Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle. The Django Web site will always have the latest information about supported databases.

We’re quite fond of PostgreSQL ourselves, for reasons outside the scope of this book, so we mention it first. However, all the engines listed here will work equally well with Django.

SQLite deserves special notice as a development tool. It’s an extremely simple in-process database engine that doesn’t require any sort of server setup or configuration. It’s by far the easiest to set up if you just want to play around with Django, and it’s even included in the standard library of Python 2.5.

On Windows, obtaining database driver binaries is sometimes an involved process. Since you’re just getting started with Django, we recommend using Python 2.5 and its built-in support for SQLite. Compiling driver binaries is a downer.

Using Django with PostgreSQL

If you’re using PostgreSQL, you’ll need the psycopg package available from http://www.djangoproject.com/r/python-pgsql/. Take note of whether you’re using version 1 or 2; you’ll need this information later.

If you’re using PostgreSQL on Windows, you can find precompiled binaries of psycopg at http://www.djangoproject.com/r/python-pgsql/windows/.

Using Django with SQLite 3

If you’re using a Python version over 2.5, you already have SQLite. If you’re working with Python 2.4 or older, you’ll need SQLite 3— not version 2—from http://www.djangoproject.com/r/sqlite/ and the pysqlite package from http://www.djangoproject.com/r/python-sqlite/. Make sure you have pysqlite version 2.0.3 or higher.

On Windows, you can skip installing the separate SQLite binaries, since they’re statically linked into the pysqlite binaries.

Using Django with MySQL

Django requires MySQL 4.0 or above; the 3.x versions don’t support nested subqueries and some other fairly standard SQL statements. You’ll also need the MySQLdb package from http://www.djangoproject.com/r/python-mysql/.

Using Django Without a Database

As mentioned earlier, Django doesn’t actually require a database. If you just want to use it to serve dynamic pages that don’t hit a database, that’s perfectly fine.

With that said, bear in mind that some of the extra tools bundled with Django do require a database, so if you choose not to use a database, you’ll miss out on those features. (We highlight these features throughout this book.)

Starting a Project

A project is a collection of settings for an instance of Django, including database configuration, Django-specific options, and application-specific settings.

If this is your first time using Django, you’ll have to take care of some initial setup. Create a new directory to start working in, perhaps something like /home/username/djcode/, and change into that directory.

Note

django-admin.py should be on your system path if you installed Django via its setup.py utility. If you checked out from Subversion, you can find it in djtrunk/django/bin. Since you’ll be using django-admin.py often, consider adding it to your path. On Unix, you can do so by symlinking from /usr/local/bin, using a command such as sudo ln -s /path/to/django/bin/django-admin.py /usr/local/bin/django-admin.py. On Windows, you’ll need to update your PATH environment variable.

Run the command django-admin.py startproject mysite to create a mysite directory in your current directory.

Let’s look at what startproject created:

mysite/
    __init__.py
    manage.py
    settings.py
    urls.py

These files are as follows:

  • __init__.py: A file required for Python treat the directory as a package (i.e., a group of modules)
  • manage.py: A command-line utility that lets you interact with this Django project in various ways
  • settings.py: Settings/configuration for this Django project
  • urls.py: The URL declarations for this Django project; a “table of contents” of your Django-powered site

Where Should This Directory Live?

If your background is in PHP, you’re probably used to putting code under the Web server’s document root (in a place such as /var/www). With Django, you don’t do that. It’s not a good idea to put any of this Python code within your Web server’s document root, because in doing so you risk the possibility that people will be able to view your code over the Web. That’s not good for security.

Put your code in some directory outside of the document root.

The Development Server

Django includes a built-in, lightweight Web server you can use while developing your site. We’ve included this server so you can develop your site rapidly, without having to deal with configuring your production Web server (e.g., Apache) until you’re ready for production. This development server watches your code for changes and automatically reloads, helping you make many rapid changes to your project without needing to restart anything.

Change into the mysite directory, if you haven’t already, and run the command python manage.py runserver. You’ll see something like this:

Validating models...
0 errors found.

Django version 1.0, using settings 'mysite.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

Although the development server is extremely nice for, well, development, resist the temptation to use this server in anything resembling a production environment. The development server can handle only a single request at a time reliably, and it has not gone through a security audit of any sort. When the time comes to launch your site, see Chapter 20 for information on how to deploy Django.

Changing the Host or the Port

By default, the runserver command starts the development server on port 8000, listening only for local connections. If you want to change the server’s port, pass it as a command-line argument:

python manage.py runserver 8080

You can also change the IP address that the server listens on. This is especially helpful if you’d like to share a development site with other developers. The following:

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080

will make Django listen on any network interface, thus allowing other computers to connect to the development server.

Now that the server’s running, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ with your Web browser. You’ll see a “Welcome to Django” page shaded a pleasant pastel blue. It worked!

What’s Next?

Now that you have everything installed and the development server running, in the next chapter you’ll write some basic code that demonstrates how to serve Web pages using Django.

Copyright 2006 Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss.
This work is licensed under the GNU Free Document License.
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