Django is a free and open source python based web framework that runs on a web server. It follows the model template view(MTV) architectural pattern. It is a high level python web framework that encourages and aids rapid development and clean pragmatic designs. Django was built by several experience developers to take care of much of the hassle of web development, so you can focus on developing your app or website without needing to reinvent the wheel. In summary, Django makes it easier to build web apps more quickly and with less code. It is ridiculously fast, reassuringly secure and exceedingly scalable. The Django framework emphasizes reusability and pluggability of components, less code, rapid development and apply better the principle of DRY(Don’t Repeat Yourself). Some well known sites that use Django include Instagram, Mozilla, BitBucket and NextDoor.
Django component wise is a combination of four things. These are CSS, Javascript, a Django template and some python code to put them all together. It also officially supports five database backends which are PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, SQlite and Oracle.
History
Django was created in the autumn of 2003, when the web programmers at the LAWRENCE JOURNAL WORLD newspaper, Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison began using python to build applications. It was released publicly under a BSC license in July 2005. The framework was named after guitarist Django Reinhardt. Adrian Holovaty is a romani jazz guitar player inspired in part by Django Reinhardt’s music, and as such the framework was named after him. In June 2008,it was announced that a newly formed Django Software Foundation would maintain Django in the future.
Simply Put,
Simply put, Django is a free and open source framework. Now, what is a framework? A framework is a combination of certain components and packages. Django is a web application framework meaning you can build web applications using these various components and packages. In the world of tech, we have what we call the frontend and the backend. For the frontend, we use HTML, CSS and Javascript. For the backend though, we have a variety of different languages that can be used. It could be Java, PHP, ASP, Python and so on. These languages are used to process information given from the frontend so the question is “How can we successfully run the backend and process information in python?”. The answer is using Django. Yes, we process information in python using the framework Django.
Django follows what is called the MVT, an acronym for Model View Template which is the process where the various consoles are separated into three categories. We have the Model which is used for DATA, View which is the controller that will control all operations and Template which is the external format which you will see on the screen. But then why is Django so popular and why is it chosen as the best among all of the frameworks we have available for python? This shall be addressed in the next article. Stay Tuned!
