Django Setup 101: How To Fire Up Your Web Application

But before you can jump into the creative process of building your app, you have to set up everything first. And this can be tremendously annoying or tedious sometimes. Not to mention the situation, where you find yourself sitting in front of the computer saying “I should have done this in the very beginning.” 

Goals

1. Install python
2. Choose virtual environment
3. Set up a virtual environment
4. Install Django
5. Start a Django project
6. Transfer to another database
7. Create a custom User model

Prerequisites

You should use the latest python version compatible with Django. You can always check the compatibility in the release notes.  

But be careful, as some python and Django packages take longer to be updated for brand new python versions. Check if the latest version is old enough. That means, if the version was released a week ago, start with the version before to avoid unpleasant issues.

Use virtual environments when coding in Python! Really. Thank me later. 

Anyway, there are multiple options when it comes to virtual environment tools. I will give you some of the most popular ones:

Let’s get to it

1. Create the virtual environment and activate it

$ conda create --name myproject python=3.8
$ conda activate myproject

$ virtualenv -p python3 myproject
$ source myproject/bin/activate

(myproject) $

2. Install Django and start your project

(myproject) $ pip install django

(myproject) $ django-admin startproject myproject

myproject/
    manage.py
    myproject/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        asgi.py
        wsgi.py

(myproject) $ ./manage.py runserver

(myproject) $ python manage.py runserver

(myproject) $ ./manage.py runserver

#!/usr/bin/env python

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.

November 12, 2020 - 15:50:53
Django version 3.1, using settings 'myproject.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

3. Transfer to a database of your liking

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib

brew update
brew install postgresql

brew services start postgresql

pip3 install psycopg2-binary

sudo su - postgres
psql

psql postgres

CREATE DATABASE myproject;


CREATE USER myprojectadmin WITH PASSWORD 'password';


ALTER ROLE myprojectadmin SET client_encoding TO 'utf8';
ALTER ROLE myprojectadmin SET default_transaction_isolation TO 'read committed';
ALTER ROLE myprojectadmin SET timezone TO 'UTC';


GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myproject TO myprojectadmin;


ALTER USER myprojectadmin CREATEDB; # This has to be set in order for unit tests to work


\q 
exit # Only on Ubuntu - Exit from the postgres session

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'myproject',
        'USER': 'myprojectadmin',
        'PASSWORD': 'password',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '',
    }
}

4. Create a custom User model

(myproject) $ ./manage.py makemigrations
(myproject) $ ./manage.py migrate