Change Database Setting

Open up mysite/settings.py, find snippet as blew:

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

Here you can change your database to others if needed
* ENGINE – Either ‘django.db.backends.sqlite3’, ‘django.db.backends.postgresql’, ‘django.db.backends.mysql’, or ‘django.db.backends.oracle’.
* NAME – Name of database

We can aslo change the time zone in the setting file

TIME_ZONE = 'America/Chicago'

To create related tables in the database, we need to execute
python manage.py migrate. It will create tables following by INSTALLED_APPS in setting.py.

To read the recetly created tables in sqlite:

python manage.py dbshell
# into sqlite shell
.table

Thre result will like blew:

sqlite> .tables
auth_group                  auth_user_user_permissions
auth_group_permissions      django_admin_log
auth_permission             django_content_type
auth_user                   django_migrations
auth_user_groups            django_session

Create a model

In offical defination, model is the single, definitive source of truth about your data.. In my option, model is only data model in single place, rather than in database as well as in you codes.

Let copy this into webapp/models.py. We create two classes which are also two tables in the database. Each variable is a filename with its data type, such as models.CharField is type char, and models.DataTimeField is datatime. Here we can also figure out a ForeignKey in class Choice which points to Question.

from django.db import models

class Question(models.Model):
question_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
pub_date = models.DateTimeField('date published')
def __str__(self):
return self.question_text

class Choice(models.Model):
question = models.ForeignKey(Question, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
choice_text = models.CharField(max_length=200)
votes = models.IntegerField(default=0)
def __str__(self):
return self.choice_text

To active model, we need to add config file into INSTALLED_APPS. webapp.apps.WebappConfig means calling WebappConfig in apps file in webapp folder.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
'webapp.apps.WebappConfig',
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.messages',
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

Then we run makemigrations to create migration files.

python manage.py makemigrations webapp
# then you will see somehitng like the following:
Migrations for 'webapp':
webapp/migrations/0001_initial.py
- Create model Choice
- Create model Question
- Add field question to choice

We can find the migration opertaion in webapp/migrations/, we run python manage.py migrate, then we can find two new table in the database already(.schema {tablename})

Summary 3 steps for making model changes:

• Change your models (in models.py).
• Run python manage.py makemigrations to create migrations for those changes
• Run python manage.py migrate to apply those changes to the database.

Play with Shell to add some records into db

To get into the shell, we need to execute

python manage.py shell

Then add some questions and choice

from webapp.models import Choice, Question
# show all question
Question.objects.all()

# add a new question
from django.utils import timezone
q = Question(question_text="What's new?", pub_date=timezone.now())

# save into database
q.save()
q.id()

# search in database, similar to where in sql
Question.objects.filter(id=1) # id=1
Question.objects.filter(question_text__startswith='What')
Question.objects.get(pk=1) # filter with pk

# add some choices, here Django creates a set to hold the "other side" of ForeignKey relation
q.choice_set.create(choice_text='Not much', votes=0)
q.choice_set.create(choice_text='The sky', votes=0)
q.choice_set.create(choice_text='The moon', votes=0)

# delete records
d = q.choice_set.filter(choice_text__startswith='The moon')
d.delete()

Django Admin

To create a admin with python manage.py createsuperuser, then system will ask you enter the username, email and password. After this, we can access admin website http://localhost:8000/admin/

If admin account want to add new question in the website, we need to add the follow snippet into admin.py

from django.contrib import admin

from .models import Question

admin.site.register(Question)

Some issue

When I tried to save question in the admin webpage, there poped out a issue like no such table: main.auth_user__old. Just marked here waiting to find the reason later.

Although I touched python for a while, most of time I use it only for data analysis with panda or some machine learning packages. Django as one of most famous webframeworks has been existing for over 12 years. So, I decide to learn it step by step with the official tutorial and share my experience with you.

Prepare Django

# install django
sudo pip install Django
# build project
django-admin startproject {name of site}
# run test
# goto project folder, you will find manage.py, run
python manage.py runserver {port}

Fast explain some of files:

• mange.py: A command-line utility that lets you interact with this Django project in various way.
• {name of site}: python package for the project
• mysite/__init__.py: An empty file that tells Python that this directory should be considered a Python package. If you’re a Python beginner, read more about packages in the official Python docs.
• mysite/settings.py: Settings/configuration for this Django project. Django settings will tell you all about how settings work.
  mysite/urls.py: The URL declarations for this Django project; a “table of contents” of your Django-powered site. You can read more about URLs in URL dispatcher.
• mysite/wsgi.py: An entry-point for WSGI-compatible web servers to serve your project. See How to deploy with WSGI for more details.

Create a new app

# add a new app
python manage.py startapp {name of app}

• In each App folder, there are three important python files
• urls.py: controls what is served based on url patterns
• models.py: database structures and metadata
• views.py: handles what the end-user “views” or interacts with

Then we need add the app into setting.py under the site folder {name of site}

INSTALLED_APPS = [
'{name of app}',
]

And update the urls.py under the same folder

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path,include

urlpatterns = [
path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
path('webapp/', include('webapp.urls')),
]

We have Completed all files modification under the site folder. Then we go to app folder to create urls.py and change view.py.

# create a file name `urls.py` under app folder
touch urls.py

# copy this to the file, which directs the request to views.py
# path(route, view, kwargs,name)
# @route: URL pattern
# @view: function name to be called
# @kwargs: argument to be passed in a dictionary
# @name: refer URL with the name
from django.urls import path
from . import views
urlpatterns = [
path('', views.index, name='index'),
]

# change view.py as
from django.http import HttpResponse
def index(request):
return HttpResponse("Hello, world. You're at the polls index.")

After all these done, we can access webapp by http://localhost:8000/{name of app}/