Starter Django Project

Components:

• Login system (with pages for registering, signing in, and password recovery)
• Bootstrap CSS and JQuery Javascript
• Example urls, models, views
• Saving user data to media folder

Things to customize:

• Database: local sqlite file or real mysql server
• Email address for sending password recovery (I just use a Gmail account)

How I created this project (using Django 1.6)

Step 1: Run commands to create boilerplate Django code

django-admin.py startproject django_base
cd django_base
python manage.py startapp custom_app
python manage.py runserver

• There are a lot of nested folders with the same names, now. The outer django_base (the one that contains manage.py) can be named whatever you want now. I happened to start this project inside of a folder I already was calling something django-related. Pathnames from here on out are relative to the other django_base folder with manage.py in it.

Step 2: Edit django_base/settings.py

• Add django_base to the list of INCLUDED_APPS
• Add custom_app to list of INCLUDED_APPS
• Change database settings here (actually I left them as the default sqlite database for now)

Step 3: Create directories to hold HTML, CSS, and Javascript

• Create django_base/static/ and django_base/templates/ directories for CSS, Javascript, and HTML
  • Put bootstrap and jquery files in static
  • Create a django_base/templates/base.html that other templates will extend from
• Create custom_app/templates/custom_app/
  • HTML templates go here
  • This directory is super redundant in its naming so that you can use templates from other apps

Step 4: Create a view!

• Make a custom_app/urls.py
• Add custom_app urls to django_base/urls.py (I made the root of my site point to the urls in custom_app)
• Add the actual url path/route for the first view/webpage
• Make a function for it in custom_app/views.py
• Make an html file in custom_app/templates/custom_app/<myview>.html that extends base.html

How I added Login Stuff

Step 1: Set up the database (let django automatically create user tables) and create a super user account

python manage.py syncdb

Step 2: Set up the right URLs and built-in django views

• Some of the views are things that django already handles and some are things I have to make myself.
• Most templates django doesn't really have alreadly (except for the admin password reset form) so I had to remake those.
• I had a version of all this code cobbled together, so I copied it and cleaned it up and made sure it all worked.
• make sure order of INSTALLED_APPS has our apps at the top so the django admin password reset doesnt clobber them

Step 3: Add a custom/extended UserProfile object that stores extra information about a user

• Look in django_base/models.py ... there are some extra functions that tell django to automatically make this extra user information object when a new user is created.
• After adding this and trying to edit my own profile, I got this error: User has no userprofile.
  • It's a special extra field attached to my user, which was made before this extra info existed, so I just deleted the database, reran syncdb, and remade my user.

Step 4: Add sign in and current user to header

Notable files

django_base/settings.py

• Where INSTALLED_APPS go, including the root app and any other apps (self-contained sub-projects or sub-urls) you make
• Where pretty much any and every setting goes, including database setup, password recovery email addresses, authentication keys for 3rd party things