⚠️ You only need to read this post if you are on the back end team 🐻

🗓️ Today’s Topics

• Using PostgreSQL with Django
• Deploying Django applications to Heroku

🎯 Project: Habit Tracker

You’ll be working on Habit Tracker this week.

It’s important to read the project requirements thoroughly and to start to think about how you would do this project.

First steps: generate the project skeleton; make sure you are using Postgres; deploy to Heroku; and design your models. Make sure to create a diagram showing model fields and relationships. Talk through with each other how you are thinking about this.

By tomorrow:

• Your application should be deployed to Heroku.
• Your models should be functional.
• You should be able to create habits and associated daily records in the Django shell (I recommend using shell_plus which is available when you have django-extensions installed).

📖 Read | 📺 Watch | 🎧 Listen

These are this week’s required readings, videos, and/or podcasts. Read, watch, or listen, and take notes.

Deployment

• 📺 Katie McLaughlin, What is Deployment, Anyway?
• 📖 Full Stack Python: Deployment
• 📖 Heroku Reference: Deploying Django Apps to Heroku
  • Walkthrough: Getting Started with Python/Django Apps on Heroku
• 🎧 Deploying and Running Django Web Apps in 2021

Databases & Data Modeling

• 📖 Full Stack Python: Databases
• 📖 Full Stack Python: ORMs
• 📖 Class-Responsibility-Collaborator Model (CRC)
• 📺 Entity Relationship Diagrams (ERD), from Lucid Chart
• 📖 Writing Safe Database Migrations in Django

Debugging

• 📖 Python Debugging with Pdb
• 📺 Damilare Onajole, Debugging Python

🔖 Resources

• 🚀 Deploying a Django app to Heroku
• Using Postgres Locally
• Django Docs: Deployment Checklist
• How to use django-extensions shell_plus

• Tutorial: Adding a Custom User Model

👾 Code & Notes

• Django with Postgres
• Habit Tracker Models - ER Diagram

🗓️ Today’s Topics

• Review registration & authentication
• Model fields
• Database tables
• One-to-many (O2M) and Many-to-many (M2M) relationships

🎯 Project

Continue working on Freeshelf, through Goals 3 and 4.

References that we used today:

• William Vincent Slug Tutorial
• Shawna’s Freeshelf with Working Categories and Slugs
• Inserting data from a csv
• Morning Class Recording Access Passcode: 5#L@^kQi

🔖 Resources

• Rebecca’s Django Videos
• Django Docs: Models
• Django Docs: Model Relationships
• ⭐ Django Docs: Model Field Reference
• Django Docs: Making Queries
• 🍕 Tips for using Django’s Many-to-Many Field
• What is an Entity Relationship Diagram? - The first video is especially good.
• Less Obvious Things to Do with the Django ORM
• Real Python: Django Migrations Primer
• Database Basics

🦉 Code & Notes

• What are Primary Keys & Foreign Keys?
• Completed Django Music

You’ve now seen how to handle data in a Django application with basic operations in these CRUD categories:

• Create - when we add a new model instance to the database
• Read - when we query the database to look up existing data
• Update - when we query the database to find existing data so we can change it
• Destroy - when we find existing data in the database and delete it

At the heart of many web applications you’ll find variations on this theme, so we’ll continue to practice it.

Today we’ll add in another essential part of web applications: user registration and login. This will allow us to create users for our application, let them log in (and out) and associate data with specific users.

📋 Django Music Project Review

• 😲 What was one AHA! moment you had?
• ⏲️ What did you spend the most time on?
• 😕 What is something that you’d like to understand better?
• 📝 What are three goals that you have set for yourself for this next assignment?

🎯 Project: Django Freeshelf

This is a 3-day assignment that you’ll work on this week. It is due on Thursday Morning, May 12. We will do end-of-phase presentations in the afternoon.

📚 Django Freeshelf

🔖 Resources

• Rebecca’s Django Videos

Authentication, Registration, and the User Model in Django

• django-registration-redux
  • We are using the simple (one-step) backend
• Simple Is Better Than Complex: How to Extend the Django User Model
  • Clear comparison of the four choices you have, and when you would use each one.
• Django docs: User Authentication
• Django docs: built-in User Model -> documentation for all the things you get for free with the User from Django
• Django docs: Extending the built-in User Model with AbstractUser
  • Django Best Practices: Custom User Model -> This tutorial is good to read for an overview, but you don’t need to follow the instructions to implement the forms to create or change a user, since we are using the django-registration-redux package for that.
• Django docs: Authentication in Web Requests -> django-registration-redux handles some of this for us (giving us the login and logout urls, for instance) but it’s helpful to see other ways you can use the authenticated user.
• The login_required decorator
• Limiting access to logged-in users that pass a test

Related Python & Django resources

• RealPython: What is a decorator?
• Python dependency management overview -> A good read to understand pip, pyenv, and pipenv better.
• 💥 Django Cheatsheet!
• 💫 Django Chat Podcast: How Django Experts Think -> Worth a listen, especially if you’re feeling discouraged about ever learning Django, and super relevant.

🦉 Code & Notes

• Example app: Django Music

🗓️ Today’s Topics

Today we continue working on our mental model of Django, understanding what it does and how it does it.

• Django urls & views
• Django templates
• Django models and the database
• Dealing with errors

🎯 Project: Uptact

• Goal for today is Task #2

🔖 Resources

• MDN: Django Introduction
• Official Django documentation
• Django Topic Guide (this is a useful table of contents for the Django docs)
• Pretty Printed Django Videos: Videos 1-10 are the ones specific to Django. There are other videos on related topics; they are useful but not relevant to the material we’re covering right now.
• Django Chat Podcast: How to Learn Django
• MDN Django Docs -> See especially the Intro section
• Pipenv documentation
• Django Debug Toolbar

Databases

• DB Browser for SQLite
• Database Design Tutorial -> This is really an introduction to databases.

🦉 Code & Notes

• Notes - Tour of a Django App
• A diagram of Django’s structure
• Django Girls app with pipenv