Editorial Review:
Django, the Python–based equivalent to the Ruby on Rails web development framework, is presently one of the hottest topics in web development today. In The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right, Adrian Holovaty, one of Django’s creators, and Django lead developer Jacob Kaplan–Moss show you how they use this framework to create award–winning web sites. Over the course of three parts, they guide you through the creation of a web application reminiscent of chicagocrime.org. The first part of the book introduces Django fundamentals like installation and configuration. You’ll learn about creating the components that power a Django–driven web site. The second part delves into the more sophisticated features of Django, like outputting non–HTML content (such as RSS feeds and PDFs), plus caching and user management. The third part serves as a detailed reference to Django’s many configuration options and commands. The book even includes seven appendixes for looking up configurations options and commands. In all, this book provides the ultimate tutorial and reference to the popular Django framework.
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Customer Reviews
Average Customer Rating: 
Excellant start to a great framework  2008-08-04
A great started for an an excellent MVC. I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to quickly assemble a website. If anything it's the python version of Ruby on Rails.
The book makes it easy to take a project from idea to concept to reality quickly.
The only issue that I have with the book is the implementation with existing or legacy web servers. The book seemed to lack procedure beyond "the norm". The procedure for Apache was very cookie cutter and did not meet the needs that I had. It honestly didn't work with any install of Apache, but mine was a specific install. Some research into the area before hand would be more beneficial.
Documentation is What Makes Django  2008-06-11
I've dabbled with what I consider to be all the major web frameworks: TurboGears, Pylons, Rails, and Django. Religion and other biases aside, what really made me finally settle on Django was the documentation (though community/all-in-one-ness/robustness aspects are also nice factors). What's notable out about Django documentation? Precision, attention to detail, comprehensiveness, and general emphasis on polish.
To many people, a book is what makes a new technology both accessible and credible. A couple years ago when I thought TurboGears was the framework I wanted, I got the book, and it was crap. Subsequently, other things about the framework started to feel lacking. Then with Pylons, there is no book, which reflects the constant state of flux of the component mix. Cool framework, admirable ideals, but no book. Now with Django, there is *the* book, and it's beautifully done, and you discover that the framework is, too.
I see this book as a true community resource. Its examples directly extend *the* tutorial. Being available in its up-to-date entirety as a living document, anyone can simply answer a question by consulting a link to a book section. I applaud the authors opening this book up to be accessible to everyone, both in ease of reading, and in being free for download. It is always reassuring to find a book about a tool being written by the authors of a tool, and that should contribute to making it the canonical Django resource.
Wonderful overview of Django 2008-03-24
Even though I'm not a real world user of Django (I'm a Grails guy), I thought I'd give this book a try as Django is in the same category of web development frameworks as Grails. After reading this book, I had a solid foundation knowledge about how Django works and principles behind it. And it is well written. I would recommend it for any serious real world user of this framework.
Good companion to online version. 2008-03-15
Although you can read this book for free online, I like having it around for easy reference. The first eight or so chapters are good for learning Django; with the subsequent chapters and appendixes good for reference.
I will say that the online document is updated regularly, with sometimes useful comments from readers. That said, I would still buy this good.
A solid introduction, lacking in examples  2008-02-22
Django is a framework I've long (in web years) held in some esteem, despite never having used it before the past few weeks. The framework's creators' many well reasoned contributions on all manner of debates about the web suggested a thoughtful approach, and the range of high quality sites powered by Django has kept growing, with the recent launch of EveryBlock being a prime example of its capabilities. So I was delighted to receive a copy of The Definitive Guide to django: Web Development Done Right for review.
Authored by two of the creators of Django: Adrian Holovaty and Jacob Kaplan-Moss, the book is carefully structured, initially placing django in context by exploring various approaches to web development, and then stepping through initial project creation, templates, models, url configuration, django's famed admin interface, and so on. After eight chapters it changes tack and switches from basic tutorial to more in-depth exploration of areas like the ORM, session handling, caching and deployment. Several appendices provide supplementary material.
The first few chapters do a good job of laying out the foci of the framework's architecture and it's Model Template View (MTV) approach. Its pace is measured and while I wonder if it might be a little too much too soon for those totally new to full stack web frameworks, it would work well for those coming from a background building web apps with PHP, Java, or for those of us who are used to working with Rails. There are new techniques to learn and I found the book particularly useful for grasping the deeply pythonic approach, favouring flexibility over convention.
A clear example of that comes in the use of Context objects for passing values between Views and Templates. The authors initially show us the most verbose and rudimentary way to do it and gradually develop that to show how they've provided for various common cases. By going through those steps there's a good chance the reader will be well equipped to work out ways to simplify their own workflow and/or create new subclasses to promote reuse in their code.
Where the book is lacking is in the examples. The introductory material, and much of the reference content is excellent, but as a newcomer to the framework I felt a little lost in how I should structure my code and how different components relate; it's clear how models relate to the database, but how do I pass them around when building associations?
I recognise that django deliberately avoids the strong conventions of the Rails community (though even there you frequently find newcomers unsure where in the directory structure to place certain components) and there's no need for lengthy tutorials on building a shop or how a magazine cms could work, but when I come to a book like this I'm looking for a guide to best practices at the project architecture level, not just the component level, and I was sorry not to find it. The authors clearly have a lot of experience of structuring django sites of all shapes and sizes and it would be good to learn more about how they keep those sites organised.
That said, this is a solid introduction to django for web developers; a solid contribution in a so-far underserved market and it's likely to come in handy for a number of people. Just be prepared to supplement it with a fair amount of time in search engines working out good strategies for connecting the pieces.
Disclaimer: I was sent a copy of this book for review by the publisher.
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