Build a Blog With Django and Astra DB

15 minutes, Intermediate, Start Building

Learn how to build a blog application with Django and connect it to Astra DB by following along with Tomi's video, located here.

Quick Start

• Signup for DataStax Astra, or login to your already existing account.
• Create an Astra DB Database if you don't already have one.

• Create an Astra DB Keyspace called sag_tech_blog in your database.
• Generate an Application Token with the role of Database Administrator for the Organization that your Astra DB is in.
• Click the 'Open in Gitpod' link:
• Once the app is finished launching in the Gitpod IDE, copy the env.example file to a file named .env and fill the required values in from your Application Token and Astra DB connection settings. (The Django setting SECRET_KEY is unrelated to Astra and can be any alphanumeric string.)
• Get your secure connect bundle from the connect page of your database and upload it to your Gitpod instance. Rename it to bundle.zip. (To upload the file, drag-and-drop it to the Explorer section of your Gitpod window.)
• Create the project tables in Astra DB by running this command in the console:

python manage.py syncdb

• Run the Django project by running this command in the console:

python manage.py runserver

• The app should open in a new browser tab by itself (if it doesn't, check your popup blocker). If you are on Gitpod, its URL will be something like https://8000-sapphire-sailfish-wfxezcum.ws-eu18.gitpod.io/; if you are running locally, open http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser instead.

Objectives

• Work through a video tutorial to build a blog with Django and Astra DB

How this works

Follow along in this video tutorial: https://youtu.be/JH24exA7-CA.