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Previous step: Serve static files, add pages, and use template inheritance
Python Django Web Project in Visual Studio 2019 (Getting Started)To install Python support for Visual Studio (also known as Python Tools for Visual Studio. Now you see.vsix file, open this in 'Extensions' in Visual Studio Code or, more simple Go to 'Extensions' in Visual Studio Code and search 'django visual studio code'. Setup Visual Studio Code for Django Install Python Extension Install pylint Install autopep8 Django Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbGuiZY. Visual Studio dev tools & services make app development easy for any platform & language. Try our Mac & Windows code editor, IDE, or Azure DevOps for free. Python Tools for Visual Studio is a completely free extension, developed and supported by Microsoft with contributions from the community. Visit our Github page to see or participate in PTVS development. Visual Studio Community 2019. Free, fully-featured IDE for students, open-source and individual.
Now that you've explored the basics of Django by building an app upon the 'Blank Django Web Project' template in Visual Studio, you can easily understand the fuller app that's produced by the 'Django Web Project' template.
In this step you now:
- Create a fuller Django web app using the 'Django Web Project' template and examine the project structure (step 4-1)
- Understand the views and page templates created by the project template, which consist of three pages that inherit from a base page template and that employs static JavaScript libraries like jQuery and Bootstrap (step 4-2)
- Understand the URL routing provided by the template (step 4-3)
The template also provides basic authentication, which is covered in Step 5.
Step 4-1: Create a project from the template
In Visual Studio, go to Solution Explorer, right-click the LearningDjango solution created earlier in this tutorial, and select Add > New Project. (Alternately, if you want to use a new solution, select File > New > Project instead.)
In the new project dialog, search for and select the Django Web Project template, call the project 'DjangoWeb', and select OK.
Because the template again includes a requirements.txt file, Visual Studio asks where to install those dependencies. Choose the option, Install into a virtual environment, and in the Add Virtual Environment dialog select Create to accept the defaults.
Once Visual Studio finishes setting up the virtual environment, follow the instructions in the displayed readme.html to create a Django super user (that is, an administrator). Just right-click the Visual Studio project and select the Python > Django Create Superuser command, then follow the prompts. Make sure to record your username and password as you use it when exercising the authentication features of the app.
Set the DjangoWeb project to be the default for the Visual Studio solution by right-clicking that project in Solution Explorer and selecting Set as Startup Project. The startup project, which is shown in bold, is what's run when you start the debugger.
Select Debug > Start Debugging (F5) or use the Web Server button on the toolbar to run the server:
The app created by the template has three pages, Home, About, and Contact, which you navigate between using the nav bar. Take a minute or two to examine different parts of the app. To authenticate with the app through the Log in command, use the superuser credentials created earlier.
The app created by the 'Django Web Project' template uses Bootstrap for responsive layout that accommodates mobile form factors. To see this responsiveness, resize the browser to a narrow view so that the content renders vertically and the nav bar turns into a menu icon:
You can leave the app running for the sections that follow.
If you want to stop the app and commit changes to source control, first open the Changes page in Team Explorer, right-click the folder for the virtual environment (probably env), and select Ignore these local items.
Examine what the template creates
At the broadest level, the 'Django Web Project' template creates the following structure:
- Files in the project root:
- manage.py, the Django administrative utility.
- db.sqlite3, a default SQLite database.
- requirements.txt containing a dependency on Django 1.x.
- readme.html, a file that's displayed in Visual Studio after creating the project. As noted in the previous section, follow the instructions here to create a super user (administrator) account for the app.
- The app folder contains all the app files, including views, models, tests, forms, templates, and static files (see step 4-2). You typically rename this folder to use a more distinctive app name.
- The DjangoWeb (Django project) folder contains the typical Django project files: __init__.py, settings.py, urls.py, and wsgi.py. By using the project template, settings.py is already configured for the app and the database file, and urls.py is already configured with routes to all the app pages, including the login form.
Question: Is it possible to share a virtual environment between Visual Studio projects?
Answer: Yes, but do so with the awareness that different projects likely use different packages over time, and therefore a shared virtual environment must contain all the packages for all projects that use it. Tv card wdm video capture driver.
Nevertheless, to use an existing virtual environment, do the following:
- When prompted to install dependencies in Visual Studio, select I will install them myself option.
- In Solution Explorer, right-click the Python Environments node and select Add Existing Virtual Environment.
- Navigate to and select the folder containing the virtual environment, then select OK.
Step 4-2: Understand the views and page templates created by the project template
As you observe when you run the project, the app contains three views: Home, About, and Contact. The code for these views is found in the app/views folder. Each view function simply calls django.shortcuts.render with the path to a template and a simple dictionary object. For example, the About page is handled by the about function:
Templates are located in the app's templates/app folder (and you typically want to rename app to the name of your real app). The base template, layout.html, is the most extensive. It refers to all the necessary static files (JavaScript and CSS), defines a block named 'content' that other pages override, and provides another block named 'scripts'. The following annotated excerpts from layout.html show these specific areas:
The individual page templates, about.html, contact.html, and index.html, each extend the base template layout.html. about.html is the simplest and shows the {% extends %} and {% block content %} tags:
index.html and contact.html use the same structure and provide lengthier content in the 'content' block.
In the templates/app folder is also a fourth page login.html, along with loginpartial.html that's brought into layout.html using {% include %}. These template files are discussed in step 5 on authentication.
Question: Can {% block %} and {% endblock %} be indented in the Django page template?
Answer: Yes, Django page templates work fine if you indent block tags, perhaps to align them within their appropriate parent elements. They're not indented in the page templates generated by the Visual Studio project template so that you can clearly see where they are placed. Viewsonic sound cards & media devices driver download for windows 10.
Step 4-3: Understand the URL routing created by the template
The Django project's urls.py file as created by the 'Django Web Project' template contains the following code:
The first three URL patterns map directly to the home, contact, and about views in the app's views.py file. The patterns ^login/$ and ^logout$, on the other hand, use built-in Django views instead of app-defined views. The calls to the url method also include extra data to customize the view. Step 5 explores these calls.
Question: In the project I created, why does the 'about' URL pattern uses '^about' instead of '^about$' as shown here?
Answer: The lack of the trailing '$' in the regular expression was a simple oversight in many versions of the project template. The URL pattern works perfectly well for a page named 'about', but without the trailing '$' the URL pattern also matches URLs like 'about=django', 'about09876', 'aboutoflaughter'and so on. The trailing '$' is shown here to create a URL pattern that matches only 'about'.
Next steps
Go deeper
Visual Studio Django
- Writing your first Django app, part 4 - forms and generic views (docs.djangoproject.com)
- Tutorial source code on GitHub: Microsoft/python-sample-vs-learning-django