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Basics

Essential commands and configurations for Django project setup and basic development.

Installation and Setup​

Installation​

# Install Django
pip install django
pip install django==4.2  # Specific version

Project Structure​

# Create project
django-admin startproject myproject
cd myproject

# Create app
python manage.py startapp myapp

# Project structure
myproject/
├── myproject/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── wsgi.py
│   └── asgi.py
├── myapp/
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── admin.py
│   ├── apps.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── tests.py
│   ├── views.py
│   └── migrations/
└── manage.py

Basic Settings​

Essential Settings Configuration​

# settings.py
import os
from pathlib import Path

BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent

SECRET_KEY = 'your-secret-key-here'

DEBUG = True

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['localhost', '127.0.0.1']

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
    'myapp',  # Your app
]

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]

ROOT_URLCONF = 'myproject.urls'

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
    }
}

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'

Management Commands​

Common Commands​

# Development server
python manage.py runserver
python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

# Database operations
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py showmigrations

# User management
python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py changepassword username

# Static files
python manage.py collectstatic

# Shell and testing
python manage.py shell
python manage.py test

# Utilities
python manage.py check
python manage.py flush

Environment Variables​

# Using python-decouple
from decouple import config

SECRET_KEY = config('SECRET_KEY')
DEBUG = config('DEBUG', default=False, cast=bool)

# .env file
SECRET_KEY=your-secret-key-here
DEBUG=True
DB_NAME=myproject

URL Configuration​

Main URLs​

# myproject/urls.py
from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('myapp.urls')),
]

App URLs​

# myapp/urls.py
from django.urls import path
from . import views

app_name = 'myapp'

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.index, name='index'),
    path('detail/<int:pk>/', views.detail, name='detail'),
]

Basic Security Settings​

Production Security​

# settings.py
SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER = True
SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF = True
X_FRAME_OPTIONS = 'DENY'

# HTTPS settings for production
SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT = not DEBUG
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE = not DEBUG
CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE = not DEBUG