Django

A web framework (helps build web applications) that uses the Model-Template-View architectural pattern.

Basics

Note which version of Django we are using, check bottom-right corner of the screen to see if you’re on the right version of the docs.
For a quick tour of Django’s various functions and some tips and terminology, highly recommend reading through at least the first part of their beginner’s tutorial: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.1/intro/tutorial01/
- Skim through subsequent tutorials to see if it has information on whatever it is you want to do — likely to be clear and helpful.
Every time you create a new app, you’ll need to also make a urls.py to set up URLconf and include the url pattern in the base urls.py file (inside the main project directory)
- Also, new apps should be housed in directories on the same level as the manage.py file
- See Django tutorial part 1 for more information on setting up a new application — what you need to know, explanations for why things are the way they are, what the heck the path and include functions do, etc.
You can refer to the base project directory using the BASE_DIR variable in the settings.py file
From docs: “Django apps are “pluggable”: You can use an app in multiple projects, and you can distribute apps, because they don’t have to be tied to a given Django installation.”
To ensure that django knows an app you’ve written is to be ‘included’, make sure to add <app-name>.apps.<AppName>Config — note the capitalized letters — to settings file

(all of these should be preceded by python manage.py

runserver — runs the server; basically sets up the server and lets you see what the website looks like
startapp — creates base directory for making an app
collectstatic — something to do with letting Django use local assests?? [may wish to look into this
shell — invokes the python shell, but realistically you can also just do this from inside pycharm
makemigrations — lets you store any changes you make to your models as a migration (human-editable file on disk)
migrate — applies changes to your database
check — examines your project for problems without touching the database or making any migrations