This page provides a compilation of Django development tips, coding style guidelines, and essential commands to streamline your workflow. Whether you're setting up a new project or optimizing an existing one, these guidelines will help you write cleaner, more maintainable code and efficiently manage your Django applications.

Coding Style & Readability

Adhering to a consistent coding style is crucial for maintaining readable and collaborative projects. Here are some key recommendations:

• Avoid abbreviating variable names to ensure clarity.
• Write out function argument names for better understanding.
• Thoroughly document your classes and methods.
• Comment your code to explain complex logic.
• Refactor repeated code into reusable functions or methods.
• Keep functions and methods short for readability.

Import Statements

Organize your import statements in a structured manner:

1. Standard library imports
2. Core Django imports
3. Third-party app imports
4. Imports from your apps

Use explicit relative imports and avoid using import *.

Database Management

Effective database management is essential for Django projects:

• Register your app in admin.py to use the Django admin panel.
• Create a superuser using python manage.py createsuperuser.
• Remember to run migrations after modifying models.py.
• Use the /admin/ page to add data for testing.

Deployment Strategies

Proper deployment practices ensure a smooth transition to production:

• Add media, database files, venv, and __pycache__ to .gitignore.
• Keep migration files in Git.
• Do not run makemigrations on the target server; only run migrate.
• Generate a requirements file: pip freeze > requirements.txt.
• Adjust settings in settings.py (e.g., set DEBUG to False).
• Pull your code to the target server.
• Grant appropriate permissions to the web server.
• Create and activate a new virtual environment on the target server.
• Install dependencies: pip install -r requirements.txt.
• Run migrations: python manage.py migrate.
• Restart your web server.

Essential Django-Admin Commands

django-admin check                       # Checks the entire django project for potential problems
django-admin changepassword <username>   # Allows changing a user’s password. It prompts you to enter a new password twice for the given user.
django-admin clearsessions               # Can be run as a cron job or directly to clean out expired sessions.
django-admin collectstatic               # Helps to collect all the static files in the one mentioned directory
django-admin createsuperuser             # Creates a superuser account (a user who has all permissions).
django-admin compilemessages             # Compiles .po files to .mo files for use with builtin gettext support
django-admin createcachetable            # Creates the tables needed to use the SQL cache backend.
django-admin dbshell                     # Runs the command-line client for specified database, or the default database if none is provided.
django-admin diffsettings                # Displays differences between the current settings.py and Django's default settings.
django-admin dumpdata                    # Output the contents of the database as a fixture of the given format (using each model's default manager unless --all is specified).
django-admin flush                       # Removes ALL DATA from the database, including data added during migrations. Does not achieve a "fresh install" state.
django-admin inspectdb                   # Introspects the database tables in the given database and outputs a Django model module.
django-admin loaddata                    # Installs the named fixture(s) in the database.
django-admin makemessages                # Runs over the entire source tree of the current directory and pulls out all strings marked for translation. It creates (or updates) a message file in the conf/locale (in the django tree) or locale (for projects and applications) directory. You must run this command with one of either the --locale, --exclude, or --all options.
django-admin help                        # display usage information and a list of the commands provided by each application
django-admin makemigrations              # create new migrations to the database based on the changes detected in the models
django-admin migrate                     # synchronize the database state with your current state project models and migrations
django-admin remove_stale_contenttypes   # Deletes stale content types (from deleted models) in your database.y.
django-admin runserver <port>            # start the development webserver at 127.0.0.1 with the port <port> default 8000
django-admin sendtestemail               # Sends a test email to the email addresses specified as arguments.
django-admin shell                       # Runs a Python interactive interpreter. Tries to use IPython or bpython, if one of them is available. Any standard input is executed as code.
django-admin showmigrations              # Shows all available migrations for the current project.
django-admin sqlflush                    # Returns a list of the SQL statements required to return all tables in the database to the state they were in just after they were installed.
django-admin sqlmigrate                  # Prints the SQL statements for the named migration.
django-admin sqlsequencereset            # Prints the SQL statements for resetting sequences for the given app name(s).
django-admin squashmigrations            # Squashes an existing set of migrations (from first until specified) into a single new one.
django-admin startapp <Appname>          # create a new django application with the specified name
django-admin startproject <ProjectName>  # create a new project directory structure
django-admin testserver                  # Runs a development server with data from the given fixture(s).
django-admin version                     # display the current django version

Starting a Django Project

Follow these steps to start a new Django project:

# 1. $ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py -o get-pip.py; python3 get-pip.py						
# 2. $ pip install virtualenv
# 3. $ mkdir django-projects
# 4. $ cd django-projects  
# 5. $ virtualenv venv 								
# 6. $ source venv/bin/activate	
# 7. $ pip install django							
# 8. $ django-admin startproject myproject
# 9. $ django-admin startapp myapp
# 10. $ python manage.py runserver