3. A new Django Project¶

3.1. Start the Django Project¶

You can create a new Django project with the following command:

$ django-admin.py startproject mysite

After you’ve run the command you’ll find the following structure:

mysite
|-- manage.py
`-- mysite
    |-- __init__.py
    |-- settings.py
    |-- urls.py
    `-- wsgi.py

3.2. Test the Development Server¶

After you’ve created the project, you can change to the directory mysite:

$ cd mysite

And try out the development server with the following command:

$ python manage.py runserver
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).
May 30, 2015 - 17:19:37
Django version 1.8.2, using settings 'mysite.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

$ python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Now you can open the “Welcome to Django” site from http://127.0.0.1:8000/. After you’ve opened the site, you can kill the development server with CTRL + C.

3.3. Configuration¶

In order to work with the project, you need to configure it. To do that, open the file settings.py in a text editor.

So that you don’t need to enter the project directory several times in the configuration, it’s saved in a “constant”. This constant can then be used everywhere where the project directory is required. You can find it right at the top of the settings.py file:

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# Build paths inside the project like this: os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ...)
import os

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))

The first thing that needs to be configured is the path where the templates will be located. The settings.py already contains a TEMPLATES constant which is preconfigured to use Django’s template engine. Add the path to the templates directory to the DIRS list:

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TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates')],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

The the existing database connection default is already configured to use SQLite, because it’s built into Python:

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# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/ref/settings/#databases

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

Next change the timezone and language to suit:

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# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/topics/i18n/

LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'

TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Berlin'

The constant LANGUAGE_CODE configures the language of the Admin inferface which we will use later to English. You can change it to a different language, e.g. use de as LANGUAGE_CODE if you want to use German.

Lastly, the path to static files must be defined at the end of settings.py by adding the STATICFILES_DIRS setting:

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# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.8/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static'),
)

Now create the directory for static files and templates under directory mysite:

$ mkdir static templates

Afterwards the directory structure should look as follows:

mysite
|-- manage.py
|-- mysite
|   |-- __init__.py
|   |-- settings.py
|   |-- urls.py
|   `-- wsgi.py
|-- static
`-- templates