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Django Multiple Project with Single Database
How to connect single database with multiple projects.
Django is huge. It has so many API. Reading the Django docs is like swimming in the ocean. You get lost easily. Trust me, I never thoroughly read the polls tutorial too. Before starting a new Django project, you have to know some basics in Django. And then the rest you can use the search engine to find the answers. I’m here to explain some basics of Django. I think it will help you start a new Django project properly.
Start
I’m not going to explain how to install Django; instead, I’m going to teach you how to start a Django project. If you read the Django documentation, then you know that startproject is the command. This command will generate Django project folders and files for the initial project. After that, you can use runserver to run the default web server to browse the website.
python manage.py runserver
When you browse you will see the Django landing page. Which you want to replace with your code.
In my previous blog post django-project-strucutre I explained how to start a project initially so you can refer that for reference.
App
We have to replace our Django default landing page with something Hello World in fact that is our final goal. So in order to do that we need to tell the Django to use our view function instead of the default landing one. View functions are usually goes into apps but sake of the simplicity in explanation I assume that you already created the apps. But remember you have to mention your created app in INSTALLED_APP then only Django will consider that as the Django apps.
URL
Let’s create a index url that points to index view function that returns Hello World html template to render. Well that sounds like simple approach but you need to be careful in every steps.
# project/urls.py or app1/urls.py (Use include to import in root)
from django.urls import path
from . import views
urlpatterns = [
path("", views.index, name="index")
]
If you run the application it will throw an error because we have not created index view functions yet.
View
If you create app using startapp command then views.py file created automatically for you. Here where you write all of your business logic.
from django.shortcuts import render
def index(request):
return render(request, "index.html")
This is very simple view function. In Django every view function takes request as the first argument. And we have to return some http response back to html template and that’s where we need help from render function.
Render function will take the request as the first argument and return wherever the HTML file we point to.
HTML
By default Django will not create any HTML part so you need to create the HTML file. Create templates folder in your app and then create two files. One is base.html and another one is index.html.
base.html file will act as the skeleton for our whole project. And index.html file will use that base skeleton to extend the web page.
In other simple terms part of index.html file will come into base.html file and that’s how the Django template system works.
<--- base.html -->
<body>
<main>
{% block content %}{% endblock content %}
</main>
<footer></footer>
</body>
Remember the base.html is just the skeleton all of our main content that comes from index.html. If you look at the view function that return index.html file only not that base.html.
So when you return the index.html Django will use the skeleton and place part of index.html content and then return the complete html file.
{% extends 'base.html' %}
{% block content %}
<p>Hello World</p>
{% endblock content %}
Extends is the keyword will tell the Django to use which skeleton to use. And the block keyword will use to replace the content.