Web Programming in Python with Django

SIPB IAP 2010

Wednesday, January 27, 2010 from 6:30-9:30pm, in room 56-114

Instructors: Maria Rodriguez '11, Steve Levine '11, Andrew Farrell '12, and Geoffrey Thomas '10 (email)

No enrollment limit, no advanced signup required.
Single session event
Prereq: Proficiency with Python. Familiarity with HTML and CSS also useful

Django allows you to create cool, dynamic websites using Python (as opposed to other languages such as PHP). Developed four years ago by a fast-moving online news operation, Django lets you build high-performing, elegant web applications quickly and with ease. It comes with an easy-to-understand templating engine, an Object Relational Mapper that lets you manipulate your database through interactions with Python objects (no MySQL required!), the ability to use the entirety of the Python programming language to make your website, and a useful admin interface. In a nutshell, Django tries to take the grunt work out of making dynamic websites, leaving you (the developer) to only think about the interesting parts.

Some topics to be covered in this crash course:

• What Django is
• Making websites the Django way: using models, views, etc.
• The Object Relational Mapper (calling methods on your Python types instead of using MySQL)
• Templates
• Forms with Django
• Django admin interface
• Go through some examples and talk about how they work

Here are the presentation slides used in lecture: Lecture Slides