Having searched the web for an easy way to upgrade my Mac to the newest and best Django version, I found it hiding in the corner of the internets. So here it is, mainly for my reference – but it might help someone else too!
>>easy_install --upgrade django
Yeah – easy install… great!
Installing requirements from a requirements.xxx file is easy! So lets keep this simple because I couldn’t find anything simple on the subject!
Be sure your virtualenv is running if so needed. By issuing this command to your terminal from within your virtualenv directory:
>>source bin/activate
Then goto your project folder and run:
>>pip install -r requirements.pip
Pip works it’s magic, and your life is now easier. Your welcome.
Getting an error when working with Django is always alarming. The yellow and grey screen with words that flutter around the page like sailors lost at sea is never a welcoming sign. So how can I assist you when you are yet again faced with this screen!?
Today we will tackle the error screen of another nature, one involving the database. Since Django has a nice abstracted database it can sometime allow you to feel lost when you get an error and can’t figure out how to fix it. The solution may not be the most graceful, but it will allow you to regain you confidence after what could be hours of trying to troubleshoot this problem.
To solve this we are going to empty the app database records with this command:
>>python manage.py reset #app
Then we can repopulate the schema using the good ole syncdb!
>>python manage.py syncdb
Voila!
There are a number of packages that are great to use for any Django project. Things like WYSIWYG editors, migration assistants, model version control, and CAS (a less used one, I am sure) have found their way to Django and are ready for an easy drop and use!
To start do an easy command line to get the required package, usually it is the name of the package – but just in case check the documentation (and don’t forget to start your virtualenv if you have one!).
After your initial checks run:
>>pip install #package_name
Great, that got it in our system environment, or virtual environment depending on setup. Now we just need to tell our package about it! Go into settings.py and look for the INSTALLED_APPS variable. Make it look like this:
INSTALLED_APPS = (
#package_name,
)
Make sure your server restarted (should be automatic after saving settings.py) and your done!
When developing a site in Django I always want to be able to see it on any one of the machines in my house. The problem with this is Django’s built in web server, although handy keeps you from broadcasting outside the computers localhost.
There is an easy solution for such a problem.
When your usually start your Django web server you type
>>python manage.py runserver
When you want to share it on your network, you are now going to type
>>python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
This will allow you to go to another computer on your network and type in the ip address of that computer and see your Django in action! So if you were using an unaltered Apple router you would type something like ‘http://10.0.2.X:8000’ in your browser.
Both the ip address and port number are also optional components, so if you wanted to run on a different ip specifically or a specific port just plug those into your runserver equation.