I need to build a web site with the following features:
1) user forum where we expect light daily traffic
2) database backend for users to create profiles, where they can log in
and upload media (pictures)
3) users can uses their profile to buy content from an online inventory
4) create web pages, shopping carts etc for online inventory
5) secure online credit card processing
I am very familiar with python but not with python web frameworks. I do know
some SQL. How do I get started developing something like this? Is Django
a good alternative?
Not programming related per se: Where do you recommend I get web hosting with a domain
name for an application like this?
Django was made for this kind of thing. Check it out.
As far as hosting, djangofriendly.com is a great resource. I have used WebFaction before and I am absolutely in love with how easy it is to get Django going with them and with their excellent customer service. Very top notch for reasonable prices if you are going the shared hosting route.
If you are looking to speed up some of the tasks described, you should check out Pinax and Django Pluggables. Thanks to the way Django applications are setup it is trivially easy to plug an application into your project.
You can try Pylons lightweight web framework.
Your requirements make pinax sound like a library you might want to look into if you go the django route.
Google App Engine will provide hosting for free as well as Django and a db..
Related
I want to create a desktop application written in python and using polymer as the front-end. To access the user interface, we use web browser such as chrome, mozilla, and safari. I did a lot of research in how to do this. The only reference I have is home Assistant, but I'm still don't quite understand about the architecture and the approach. Anyone have another solution or approach in how to do this?
python ships with a basic http server, however according to the docs it's not made for production use. But it's probably good enough for your use case (single user). On top of this you can implement a basic REST-Api and serve your frontend (.js/.html) as static content.
Or use a framework like django https://www.djangoproject.com/
I'm trying to build a niche social network like Instagram as a Python/Django application.
So the things I need, regarding architecture, are (I guess):
REST API (e.g. api.mystagram.com).
Public website (www.mystagram.com or mystagram.com).
URL shortener (e.g. mystagr.am).
Android app
iPhone app
Windows Phone app
...
Before this I only built simple to some less-simple websites, but never extremely complex with own custom APIs or so. I have never build my own REST API before (I have used other REST APIs though) or even built an Android/iPhone app and distributed it in the Play Store/App Store (I have made some typical hello world examples though).
So, the most important thing to me seems to create a kick-ass REST API first and proceed from there. I am blocked however by a few questions.
How should I organize the projects for the public website and REST API? Should these be separate Django projects or should I create only one Django project and add both the public website and REST API as an internal Django module?
Should the public website also make use of the REST API? Or is it better to just use the plain Django models for this?
Thanks in advance for any help! If somebody knows some great presentations or so on this topic (architecture), always welcome!
Kind regards,
Kristof
Django REST Framework
https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework
Very well maintained, great documentation, easy to use.
I think Tastypie will do what you want. And its simple and easy. Check this out - http://django-tastypie.readthedocs.org/en/latest/!
To Answer your first question, It would be good practice to put public web site and REST APIs into one django project. Now days every web application contains public web site as well as rest apis for mobile app. So it would be easier to maintain both website and rest apis if they both in one application. Below is Django REST Framework link.
https://github.com/tomchristie/django-rest-framework
For second question, Yes you can use rest apis in website also. But in general you don't need to do it. In most of the cases django model works for you.
I'm slightly confused on what is meant by a "web application". I.e. Django positions itself as "a web framework" for the development of "web apps", quite similar to the description of Pyramid. What I'm looking for is a framework for an application that has a browser interface but is very database driven. In short: It's a system that should handle transaction and subscriptions. These transactions are registered through a web interface. The backend consists of XML/JSON feeds of these subscriptions/transactions and an administrative interface to generate statistics and reports. Quite similar to a ticketing/box office system.
Now: Is it a good decision to start out with something like Django/Pyramid even though they seem more focussed on the creation of "websites" rather than (scalable) input/output "applications". Is there any python framework that I'm better of using or are they perfectly suited for the kind of software that I'm describing?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!
I don't know Pyramid at the time of writing so I'll answer the Django part, though I can imagine the answer to apply to Pyramid as well as the distinction between websites and web application is quite vague.
Django is suitable for both websites and web applications: you can create an informative website for your local library as well as an all-in web application with lots of interactive features. Django simply facilitates the creation of the backend of a web system. Both websites and web applications use databases, have caching and can have interactive parts with forms.
It's just that websites are usually just for informing the user (most sites out there) or interacting with others (such as forums). A web application is best described with some examples, such as webmail, administrative interfaces, Google Docs, etc; it serves as a replacement of a desktop application.
From a technical perspective, there's no clear cut thing that separates the world of websites from web applications, it's just a matter of what you create with your web framework.
To answer your question, Django is quite suitable for creating a database-driven web application as it supports multiple databases, caching, autmatic creation and handling of forms, etc. I can imagine Pyramid to be suitable as well but I can't answer that. It's good to explore your options.
I believe that at this point you might want to think more about the overall architecture of your application rather than frameworks. For Example
Single Tier - Just a simple webapp, using simple file or object storage
Two Tier - Webapp + Relational Database. The webapp contains the presentation logic + business logic using MVC principles
Three Tier - Webapp + Middle Tier + Relation Database. In this setting, the Middle Tier will basically contain all the business & processing logic. The Webapp is then just a presentation layer
Once you decide the architecture, you can then start thinking about which framework to use for each of the component of the architecture.
I believe progressing this way will be less confusing and will give clarity of thought.
I have a django application hosted on a server running on Apache + Ubuntu. I deployed the application using mod_wsgi. Is there any way to find out the number of visitors to my web site.
I realize that this query might have little to do with django and more do with the server. Any help would be appreciated.
Why not just use Google Analytics? You can easily monitor user behavior, traffic source, time spend on each page, etc.
If you really want to do this with Django you could write a context processor to record each request, but then you would have to write the user's IP and check if the user has not visited before and this would be incredibly imprecise since there might be different users sharing the same IP, etc.
How about using some free statistics provider like Statcounter or Google Analytics?
If you don't want to use Google Analytics or similar, but do it all yourself, you have two options:
One is to alter all views, if you are using class-based view then add a mixin (see this SO question for more information about mixins,) or if you are using the old function-based view you have to manually call another function to keep track.
The other alternative, and probably best one, is to write a middleware class, and keep track through that.
There's also this free and powerful Django app Chartbeat that you could try to work with.
Chartbeat provides real-time analytics to websites and blogs. It shows visitors, load times, and referring sites on a minute-by-minute basis. The service also provides alerts the second your website crashes or slows to a crawl.
https://django-analytical.readthedocs.io/en/latest/services/chartbeat.html
I need to create web application, which can be reached by user as regular web site and as XML-RPC web service. Also web site should have mobile version. I'm planning to use next technologies:
Django (for web frontends (regular and mobile)).
Pyramid (for web service).
SQLAlchemy, Memcached (for persistence level)
Later other projects can reach this data and providing logic, so I think it is better to make two tiers. I see it in next way:
Tier 1. Main logic service level. This level will provide API for frontend applications (Django powered web site, for example).
Tier 2. Different mostly end client applications (web site, API for remote client devices).
For communication between this tiers I'm planning to use XML-RPC protocol.
In this case it will be easy to scale it and add new front end application or connect another projects to this (I believe it).
I have main question, -- what can I use to make it easy build first tier? Maybe there is some framework good for that?
And what do you think about this whole architecture. Because I'm filling that I'm thinking in Java terms developing in Python. Maybe there is some another idioms in Python world for such situations.
Thanks for you time and help.
P. S.
Some links for reading are welcome.
This architecture really makes no sense. You're using Django, a full-stack web framework, for the front end, but not using it for the database. And you're using Pyramid, another full-stack web framework, for the web service side, thus ensuring that you duplicate all the business logic.
Much as I am an advocate of Django, I would say it has no place in your architecture. It looks like the only thing you're really using it for is URL routing and templates, both of which Pyramid does itself fine - you can even use Jinja2, which is based on Django's template language, as the template language in Pyramid if you like.
Doing it this way means that you can share the business logic between the front-end and web service code, since you'll almost certainly find that a lot of it will be the same.
I must say also that I don't understand the division into tiers, which you have described as separate from the front-end/web service division. To me, the web service is the second tier. It makes no sense to have a further division.
You should checkout the Turbogears framework as it is composed of several popular components: ORM with sqlalchemy, pylons for logic and support for WSGI, permits support for several templating engines for the frontend... endless.
I use it for several web-services behind AJAX-enabled front-ends (like Flex-based apps, among others). You can front end the TG2-based webapp with apache or your favorite WSGI-enabled web server too.
Checkout their website since they have a tutorial to setup a wiki in 20 minutes.
Cheers!