Learning Tracker

Creators: @benthecoder & @Jjay35.

This was my first time testing out the Django Web Framework by Python. To go hands-on with the frawework, I did a step-by-step tutorial based on the book Python Crash Course.

Overall the experience was good, I learned a lot about what it takes to build a django app from scratch, which essentially is a CRUD app (create, read, update and delete)

How Django Works

Web Requests -> URLs -> View Functions -> Templates

After completing the tutorial, I found the way django works is boiled down to the above steps.

Django can be defined as a set of components that receives web requests and returning them. In other words, django can accept the request for URLs like www.x.com, and return the HTML needed for the browser to render the page.
The entry point for the django app are URls. As a django developer, there is complete freedom to define URLs to be whatever they want. And this URL is what allows a user to access the app, which is then passed to a view function for processing.
View functions are python code that are executed when the URL is accessed, this function can simply be returning a string of text, or it can be as complex as processing payments, querying databases, processing forms, etc. Once this view is done processing, a web response (HTML template) is provided back to the user.
This web response basically tells the user that they are in the right webpage, and they are created with Django's templating system.

These are the core concepts that gives a developer flexibility and freedom to build a wide range of applciations, either a simple blog, or a learning tracker in my case, to rich desktop applications. To give an example, Pinterest and Instagram are powered by the Django Framework.

What I've learned

Creating a django apps

setting up a virtual env with pyenv
Creating superuser for admin sites
Using Django shell to work with project's data in terminal session
Define URLs, create view functions and write templates
Used template inheritance to simplify structure for individual templates

Setting up user accounts

Used forms to users to add entries
added log in and out functionality
Used django's UserCreationForm to let people create accounts
Used decorator function @login_required to restrict access to certain pagse

Styling and deploying

Used the bootstrap library and django-bootstrap4 app to give my web app a professional appearance
Used boostrap templates and using the Navbar static template
Used a jumbotron to style my home page
Deployed to heroku
Secured my app by setting DEBUG=False on the live server

I'm by no means a django expert, thus I will continue to develop this app as I learn more about this framework and expand my web-dev abilities

benthecoder/learning-tracker