Best practices for Professional Developer – Django Framework

26 July 2024

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Django is an open-source, Python-based framework for building web applications. To make our Django code more readable and efficient we should follow a certain set of rules/practices. These should not be seen as the right way or the only way to work with Django, but instead best practices to work with Django framework

Coding style

In general, code should be clean, concise, readable, Testable and DRY (Don’t repeat yourself).Try to follow PEP8 guidelines as closely as reasonable.

Using virtual environment

Avoid using global environment for project dependencies, since it can produce dependency conflicts. Python can’t use multiple package versions at the same time. This can be a problem if different projects require different incompatible versions of the same package. Always isolate your project requirements and dependencies in a virtual environment. Most common way to do it is by using virtualenv.

Requirements.txt File

Requirements are the list of Python packages (dependencies) your project is using while it runs, including the version for each package. It is important to update your requirements.txt file for collaborating properly with other developers. This file, when included in your code repository, enables you to update all the packages installed in your virtual environment by executing a single line in the terminal.

In order to generate a new requirements.txt file or update the existing one use this command. Make sure that you are in a correct directory.

(virtualenv) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt

It is a good practice to update the requirements.txt file before pushing code to the repository and install requirements.txt file after pulling code from the repository.

Avoid writing fat views

You should write fat models, skinny views, which means try to write most of your logic in model itself.

For example: Suppose we are implementing a functionality of sending an email to user, it is better to extend the model with an email function instead of writing this logic in your controller/view. This makes your code easier to unit test because you can test the email logic in one place, rather than repeatedly in every controller/view where this takes place.

Correct model naming

Generally models represent a single object or entity so model names should be a singular noun.

# Bad practice 
class Users(models.Model): 
  pass
  
# Good practice 
class User(models.Model): # use 'User' instead of 'Users' 
  pass

Using the correct related-name in model relationships

Related name specifies the reverse relation from the parent model back to the child model. It is reasonable to indicate related-name in plural as it returns a queryset

# parent model 
class Owner(models.Model): 
    pass
   
# child model 
class Item(models.Model): 
    # use "items" instead of "item" 
    owner = models.ForeignKey(Owner, related_name ='items') 

Django templates

Location: Templates can be placed at two places, either in the app directory itself or at the root of project. It is recommended to put templates in the root directory but if you want to make your app reusable (use it at multiple places) than you should place it in app directory.

#Good practice
root_folder/
    my_app1/
    my_app2/
    my_app3/
    templates/

#If you want to make your app reusable
root_folder/
    my_app1/
        templates/
    my_app2/
        templates/
    my_app3/
        templates/

Naming:Correctly naming your templates helps any new developer immediately picking up your django code. Good template name looks like this

[application]/[model]_[function].html

For example, creating a template to list all of the contacts (Contact model) in my address book (address_book application), I would use the following template: