Exercise - Create your first project

  • 6 minutes

Now that we've explored some basic concepts of Django, let's begin creating the project.

Create a project with Django-admin

As highlighted previously, a Django project is the container for our entire project and any applications we create. Let's create our project.

Inside the terminal window in Visual Studio Code, run the following command:

django-admin startproject helloproject .

Important

The trailing period at the end of the command is important. It instructs django-admin to use the current folder. If you leave off the period, it will create an additional subdirectory.

After you run the preceding command, the new project should now be in your chosen directory. In this instance, you would see a new folder called helloproject.

Explore the project structure

Now that the Django project has been created, let's look at the structure to see what was included.

manage.py
helloproject/
    __init__.py
    asgi.py
    settings.py
    urls.py
    wsgi.py

  • The command-line utility manage.py is created in every Django project. It has the same function as django-admin. The following example shows how it could be used if you were inside the project folder and wanted to see the available subcommands.

    python manage.py help

  • helloproject is considered the Python package for your project.

  • init.py is an empty file that functions to tell Python that this directory should be considered a package.

  • settings.py contains all of your settings or configurations.

  • urls.py contains the URLs within the project.

  • asgi.py and wsgi.py serve as the entry point for your web servers depending on what type of server is deployed.

Run the project

Now that Django is installed, a project has been created, and we've examined the project structure, it's time to make sure our project is working correctly.

  1. Inside the terminal window in Visual Studio Code, enter the following code to start the server.

    python manage.py runserver

    The project performs system checks and starts your development server. Copy and paste the URL of your development server, which should be http://localhost:8000, into your preferred browser. You should see a Django Congratulations page with an image of a rocket taking off.

  2. Stop the server temporarily, because we'll need to reconfigure our project. Inside the terminal window, select Ctrl+C.

Create the Hello World app

We've learned the basics about the Django framework and examined the folder structure of our project. Now it's time to create our first app! The Hello, world! app will help you understand how apps are created and how they work in unison with the Django project.

Inside the terminal window, run the following command to create the app.

python manage.py startapp hello_world

With this command, Django creates the required folders and files, and the following structure should now be visible.

hello_world/
    __init__.py
    admin.py
    apps.py
    migrations/
        __init__.py
    models.py
    tests.py
    views.py

Register app with project

Because apps and projects are separate in Django, you must register your app with the project. This is done by updating the INSTALLED_APPS variable inside settings.py for the project, adding a reference to the config class for the app. The config class is found in apps.py, and is the same name as the project. In our example, the class will be named HelloWorldConfig.

  1. Inside helloproject, open settings.py.

  2. Find the list INSTALLED_APPS, which should be in line 33.

  3. Add the following to the end of the list, inside the square brackets ([ ]):

    'hello_world.apps.HelloWorldConfig',

  4. The updated INSTALLED_APPS list should look like the following:

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

  5. Save all files by selecting File > Save all.

Congratulations! You've now created your first Django project and app. Next is to create a path and view to add some functionality.