Build a TODO App using Django in minutes.

<h4>Virtual Environment (Optional):</h4>
To understand and create a Python virtual environment: <a href="2f159d77-c8e6-49cf-8027-1fe7230ea11c" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Windows</a>, <a href="175bd820-457d-4dba-a16f-226b0ec004ad" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mac&amp;Linux</a>
<h4>Install Django:</h4>
<pre class="language-markup"><code>pip3 install django</code></pre>
<h4>Create a Django project:</h4>
Before running the command below, make sure to change your directory to where you want you Django project to be.
<pre class="language-markup"><code>django-admin startproject project</code></pre>
This is what you'll get:
<img src="https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/kowe/media/uploads/content/07a2874b-4edb-4d3c-9b6c-d718ba0e5528_92a623e8-c1b1-4711-8aea-1fb915a8314e.webp" alt="" width="282" height="444">
Django creates a directory with the same name as your project, which contains several files:
<ol>
<li>manage.py: A command-line utility that lets you interact with your project, including running development servers, running database migrations, and executing tests.</li>
<li>settings.py: The main configuration file for your project. It contains settings such as database connection details, installed apps, and middleware.</li>
<li>urls.py: The file that maps URLs to views. It contains a list of URL patterns, each with a corresponding view function.</li>
<li>wsgi.py: A file used for deploying your project on a WSGI server, such as Apache or Nginx.</li>
<li>asgi.py: A file used for deploying your project on an ASGI server, such as Daphne or Uvicorn.</li>
</ol>

Create a Django project

Change your current directory to the project we just created:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>cd project</code></pre>
Then, create a Django app:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py startapp app</code></pre>
This command will create a folder called app:
<img src="https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/kowe/media/uploads/content/2720ff7c-b593-455b-b802-c3dfe7822fa4_92a623e8-c1b1-4711-8aea-1fb915a8314e.webp" alt="" width="280" height="584">
It's a directory with the name of your app, which contains several files:
<ol>
<li>models.py: This is where you define the data models for your app, including the fields and relationships between them.</li>
<li>views.py: This is where you define the view functions for your app. Views are responsible for processing incoming requests and returning responses.</li>
<li>urls.py: This is where you define the URL patterns for your app. It maps URLs to views.</li>
<li>admin.py: This file is used to register the models for your app with Django's admin interface. You can use the admin interface to manage your app's data.</li>
<li>tests.py: This is where you write unit tests for your app.</li>
</ol>
<h4>settings.py:</h4>
<pre class="language-python"><code>INSTALLED_APPS = [
 #...
 'app'
]</code></pre>
Add 'app' to the INSTALLED_APPS list so that Django recognizes it.

Create a Django app

The application models are in other words our database tables:
app/models.py
<pre class="language-python"><code>from django.db import models

class Task(models.Model):
 name = models.CharField(max_length=200)
 created = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

 def __str__(self):
 return self.name</code></pre>
Code explanation:
The idea is to have a Task table where will all our tasks be stored. Each Task has:
<ol>
<li>A name</li>
<li>A date on which it has been created.</li>
</ol>
The <code>__str__()</code> method in Django models provides a human-readable representation of the model instance.
&nbsp;

Creating our Models

Running the migrations means that we want to apply the changes made to our models.py file to our Database.
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py makemigrations</code></pre>
This one creates a file in migrations/0001_initial.py that contains all the changes that we just made to our models.py.
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py migrate</code></pre>
This one uses the file created to apply the changes to our database.
<img src="https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/kowe/media/uploads/content/2ba861b5-508f-424b-bb9f-61288058eed0_92a623e8-c1b1-4711-8aea-1fb915a8314e.webp" alt="" width="1314" height="1004">
<h4>The Database we're using:</h4>
You'll find the code snippet below In your settings.py file. This means that we're using an SQLite DB.
<pre class="language-python"><code>DATABASES = {
 'default': {
 'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
 'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
 }
}</code></pre>
&nbsp;

Running Migrations

We will create a task using the django admin panel.
1- Register the Task in&nbsp;admin.py:
<pre class="language-python"><code>from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Task

admin.site.register(Task)</code></pre>
This will add the Task table to the admin panel.
2- Create a superuser:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py createsuperuser</code></pre>
We need the superuser to be able to access the admin panel.
3- Start the server:
<pre class="language-markup"><code>python manage.py runserver</code></pre>
4- Navigate to the admin panel in localhost:8000/admin/ and log in using the credentials you just created:
<img src="https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/kowe/media/uploads/content/4695f6ed-28dd-4a70-95d7-6d4462b50168_92a623e8-c1b1-4711-8aea-1fb915a8314e.png" alt="" width="761" height="537">
5- Create a Task instance using the UI(User Interface):
<img src="https://fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/kowe/media/uploads/content/75e4b2c7-0de5-4c3f-a700-27b88be11fe5_92a623e8-c1b1-4711-8aea-1fb915a8314e.gif" alt="" width="800" height="406">

Create a task

To display the tasks in an HTML File, we will need a view(AKA controller), a template, and to set up the URLs.
app/views.py:
<pre class="language-python"><code>from .models import Task
from django.shortcuts import render


def home(request):
 context = {
 'tasks': Task.objects.all(),
 }
 return render(request, "app/home.html", context)</code></pre>
This function/view will render the HTML file called home.html, and will pass the tasks to the template in the context variable.
<code>Task.objects.all()</code> is a Django queryset, it will get all the Task objects that exist in the database.
app/templates/app/home.html (create it):
<pre class="language-markup"><code>{% for task in tasks %}
&lt;li&gt; &lt;b&gt;{{task.name}}&lt;/b&gt;, {{task.created}}&lt;/li&gt;
{% endfor %}</code></pre>
Notice that we're using the tasks passed in the context variable from the view in our for loop.
app/urls.py (create it):
<pre class="language-python"><code>from django.urls import path
from app import views


urlpatterns = [
 path('', views.home, name='home'),
]</code></pre>
This means that when we go to localhost:8000/, the home() view will be called. The home() view will render the HTML page called home.html.
project/urls.py:
<pre class="language-python"><code>from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import (path, include) # Add include also.


urlpatterns = [
 path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
 path('', include('app.urls')), # Line added.
] </code></pre>
Including the app URLs(app/urls.py) in the project URLs(project/urls.py) using include() simply tells django to take into consideration all of our app URLs.&nbsp;

Displaying the tasks

Here is <a href="e58c1ea7-e3ed-4f9b-b777-1cfb6db1049e" target="_blank" rel="noopener">how to deploy your Django app in PythonAnywhere quickly</a>.

Make a simple Django TODO app

Create a Django project

Virtual Environment (Optional):

Install Django:

Create a Django project:

Create a Django project

Create a Django app

Creating our Models

Running Migrations

Create a task

Displaying the tasks

Deploy it