The Django Book

Installing an official release

Most people will want to install the latest official release from http://www.djangoproject.com/download/. Django uses the standard Python distutils installation method, which in Linux land looks like:

1. Download the tarball, which will be named something like Django-1.0.tar.gz.
2. tar xzvf Django-*.tar.gz
3. cd Django-*
4. sudo python setup.py install

If everything worked, you should be able to import the module django from the Python interactive interpreter.

>>> import django
>>> django.VERSION
(1, 0, ‘official’)

Installing Django from Subversion

If you want to work on the bleeding edge, or if you want to contribute code to Django itself, you should install Django from its Subversion repository.

Subversion is a free, open-source revision-control system similar to CVS, and the Django team uses it to manage changes to the Django codebase. At any given time, you can use a Subversion client to grab the very latest Django source code, and, at any given time, you can update your local version of the Django code — known as your “local checkout” — to get the latest changes and improvements made by Django developers.

The latest-and-greatest Django development code is referred to as “the trunk.”

To grab the latest Django trunk:

1. Make sure you have a Subversion client installed. You can get the software free from http://subversion.tigris.org/ and excellent documentation from http://svnbook.red-bean.com/
2. Check out the trunk using the command svn co http://code.djangoproject.com/svn/django/trunk django_src
3. Symlink django_src/django so that django is within your Python site-packages directory, or update your PYTHONPATH to point to it.

When installing from Subversion, you don’t need to run python setup.py install.

Because the Django trunk changes often with bug fixes and feature additions, you’ll probably want to update it every once in a while — or hourly, if you’re really obsessed. To update the code, just run the command svn update from within the django_src directory. When you run that command, Subversion will contact our Web server, see if any code has changed and update your local version of the code with any changes that have been made since you last updated. It’s quite slick.

Using Django with PostgreSQL

If you’re using PostgreSQL, you’ll need the psycopg package available from http://initd.org/projects/psycopg1. Make sure you use version 1, not version 2 (which is still in beta).

If you’re using PostgreSQL on Windows, you can find precompiled binaries of psycopg at http://stickpeople.com/projects/python/win-psycopg/.

Using Django with SQLite 3

You’ll need SQLite 3 — not version 2 — and the pysqlite package from http://initd.org/tracker/pysqlite. Make sure you have pysqlite version 2.0.3 or higher.

Using Django with MySQL

Django requires MySQL 4.0 or above; the 3.x versions don’t support transactions, nested procedures, and some other fairly standard SQL statements. You’ll also need the MySQLdb package from http://sourceforge.net/projects/mysql-python.

Using Django with MSSQL

Using Django with Oracle

Using Django without a database

As mentioned above, Django doesn’t actually require a database. If you just want to use it to serve dynamic pages that don’t hit a database, that’s perfectly fine.

With that said, bear in mind that some of the extra tools bundled with Django do require a database, so if you choose not to use a database, you’ll miss out on those features. (We’ll highlight these features throughout this book.)

The development server

Change into the mysite directory, if you haven’t already, and run the command python manage.py runserver. You’ll see something like this:

Validating models...
0 errors found.

Django version 1.0, using settings 'mysite.settings'
Development server is running at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

You’ve started the Django development server, a lightweight Web server you can use while developing your site. We’ve included this with Django so you can develop things rapidly, without having to deal with configuring your production Web server (e.g., Apache) until you’re ready for production. This development server watches your code for changes and automatically reloads, helping you make many rapid changes to your project without needing to restart anything.

Although the development server is extremely nice for, well, development, resist the temptation to use this server in anything resembling a production environment. The development server can only handle a single request at a time reliably, and it has not gone through a security audit of any sort. When the time comes to launch your site, see Chapter XXX for information on how to deploy Django.

python manage.py runserver 8080

python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080

Now that the server’s running, visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ with your Web browser. You’ll see a “Welcome to Django” page, in pleasant, light-blue pastel. It worked!