Empty project to follow the Django 4.2 LTS official tutorial

Note: this project contains a .gitignore file, so that you will only share source code on GitHub. In particular it ignores:

• Compiled Python code (.pyc files)
• VS Code IDE stuff (.vscode/ subdir)
• SQLite database content (db.sqlite3 file)
• etc.

Get your own local copy of this project

1. Fork this project:
   1. Click the "Fork" button in the-top right corner of this page
   2. Select your GitHub account; you will be landing in your project's GitHub page (john-doe/awng-tutorial instead of EISC-209-AWNG/awng-tutorial)
2. Add your teachers as members of your project:
   1. Go to Settings / Collaborators on your project's GitHub page
   2. Use Add Collaborator for each teacher (type its GitHub identifier) :
      • brunoilponseisae
      • tanguy-perennou
      • trsalomon
3. Allow teachers to create issues in your project
   1. Go to Settings / General on your project's GitHub page
   2. Scroll down until you find the Features section, and enable the Issues feature
4. Rename your project so that it clearly identifies you:
   1. Go to Settings/ General on your project's GitHub page
   2. Type the new Repository Name: awng-tutorial-firstname-lastname, with your name, e.g. awng-tutorial-john-doe
   3. Click the "Rename" button

At this point, you have your own project on GitHub with an appropriate initial content. Next, you need to get a working copy on your computer:

1. Follow the instructions of the Cloning your forked repository section of https://docs.github.com/en/get-started/quickstart/fork-a-repo
2. Launch VS Code and open the local directory, named awng-tutorial-firstname-lastname
3. In your local project directory, create a virtual environment and install Django (see next section)

Install Django 4.2 LTS in a virtual environment

The following commands create a venv virtual environment in your local copy of the project, and let you install Django inside this virtual environment; you will also install the djlint tool that VS Code uses to detect some syntax errors. Those installs are made with the pip command which is part of the Python distribution.

Open a terminal in your local directory (it can be VS Code integrated terminal), and type the following commands (after the $ prompt sign); notice the (venv) prompt prefix, which indicates when you are in the virtual environment:

On Linux or macOS

$ cd /path/to/project
$ python -m venv venv
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ pip install django==4.2
(venv) $ pip install djlint

On Windows via Git Bash

$ cd /path/to/project
$ py -m venv venv
$ source venv/Scripts/activate
(venv) $ pip install django==4.2
(venv) $ pip install djlint

On Windows via powershell

$ cd \path\to\project
$ py -m venv venv
$ venv\Scripts\activate
(venv) $ pip install django==4.2
(venv) $ pip install djlint

Warning: activate might not work on Windows, complaining about some "execution policy" matter. In that case, open a powershell console, run Set-ExecutionPolicy -scope CurrentUser and answer bypass.

Use the virtual environment afterwards

Every time you will use a new terminal/console to type python or Django commands, you will need to reactivate the virtual environment by calling the activate script. Actually, you need to run the activate script if you do not see (venv) before the shell prompt.

For instance, every time you restart VS Code to work on the project, you will have to go to the project local directory if needed, and then to activate venv:

$ cd /path/to/project
$ source venv/bin/activate
(venv) $ 

or on Windows via powershell in VS Code:

$ cd \path\to\project
$ venv\Scripts\activate
(venv) $ 

or on Windows via Git Bash in VS Code:

$ cd /path/to/project
$ source venv/Scripts/activate
(venv) $ 

Do the Django official tutorial in VS Code

Open the /path/to/project folder in VS Code (menu File > Open Folder...). Your VS Code should already be configured with Python, Django and SQLite3 extensions according to previous instructions.

Then open Django's Getting Started documentation and do the seven parts of the Writing your first Django app tutorial, which consists in coding a mysite/polls Django web server.

Regularly save your work with Git

• First, to your local copy, with regular and frequent calls to git add ... and git commit -m "..."
• Also, to your GitHub repository, with regular calls to git push
• If in doubt, use git status and git log

⚠️ Focus on commits quality:

• Every commit should be atomic: consistent set of modifications, tested and validated.
• Every commit must also be documented: provide a comment which is useful to you as well as other readers: what did you do between the commit and the previous one? Here are a few examples: "Add Choice model", "Add index view plus associated URL", "Django tutorial part 3". These messages must inform you, even after 3 months.

💡 When you are comfortable with git add and git commit, systematically use a new branch for each new tutorial chapter (see Git slides on LMS). You will then use git branch, git switch and git merge.

Read extra resources

• Working with forms
• How to manage static files (e.g. images, JavaScript, CSS)
• The Django template language