A minimal Django App

This documents the process for creating and deploying a Django application.

As an example this application generates a QR code base on user input and save the code as a PNG image on disk.

1. Setting up the Django environment

• Create a project folder
• Create a virtual environment for the project
  • Run pipenv shell
• Install dependencies
  • Run pipenv install django qrcode pillow
  • Run django-admin --version to confirm

2. Create the Django project

• Run django-admin startproject qr_code_generator .
• Start the dev server to confirm
  • Run python manage.py runserver

3. Create the App

• Create a new app
  • Run python manage.py startapp qr_code_generator_app
• Register the app in the project
  • Open settings.py
  • Add qr_code_generator_app to the INSTALLED_APPS list
  • Add STATIC_FILES_DIRS = [BASE_DIR / "static"] for serving the QR image
• Create the 'static' folder

4. Creating the View, Template and URL Routing

• View: processes user input (text for the QR code) and generates the QR image using the qrcode library.
• Template: Provides the HTML form and displays the QR image.
• URLs: Maps the browser's request to the view

View

• Shows a form for the text input
• Generate a QR code from the input and save it as an image in the static folder.
• Pass the image path to the template for display

Template

Defines the HTML interface.

• Create a templates folder inside app folder
  • Run mkdir qr_code_generator_app/templates
  • Run mkdir qr_code_generator_app/templates/qr_generator
• Create the template HTML file
  • Create qr_code_generator_app/templates/qr_generator/qr_form.html
  • Write app UI logic

Set URL routing

Connects the view to a URL so the browser knows where to go.

• Create app urls folder
  • Create qr_code_generator_app/urls.py
  • Add paths (endpoints) to the views for the app
• Update the project urls
  • Include the app urls in the project urls
  • Also add a path to the static files for serving static files

Enable static files

• Run python manage.py collectstatic --noinput