Django Tutorial: Features, Architecture & History

Django powers some of the largest sites on the web while keeping everyday development fast and organized. Before exploring its features, architecture, and history, the sections below start with the basics of web frameworks and what makes Django distinct.

Django Tutorial Summary

This Django tutorial covers all the basic topics from scratch. In this tutorial, you will learn concepts such as what Django is, its history, its features, the characteristics of the Django framework, the components of Django, its advantages and disadvantages, and much more.

Before learning Django, let us understand:

What is a Web Framework?

A web framework is a code library that helps you build a flexible, scalable, and maintainable dynamic website, web app, or web service. Different web frameworks include Zend for PHP, Ruby on Rails for Ruby, and others.

What is Django?

Django is a web development framework for Python which offers standard methods for fast and effective website development. The primary goal of this high-level web framework is to create complex database-driven websites. It helps you build and maintain quality web applications. It enables you to make the development process smooth and time-saving for rapid development.

Why Django? Key Advantages of Django

Here are the main advantages of Django:

• Django is easy to set up and run. It offers a variety of options to get started.
• It provides a ready-to-use user interface for administrative activities.
• It enables multilingual websites by using its built-in internationalization system.
• It helps you to meet massive traffic demands quickly.
• Django is used to build all types of content management systems, social networks, as well as scientific computing platforms.
• Django helps you to provide end-to-end application testing.
• It helps you to document your API with an HTML output.
• The REST framework has rich support for several authentication protocols.
• It offers permissions and throttling policies.
• It is widely used for rate limiting API requests from a single user.

History of Django

Year	Milestone
2003	The project was started by Adrian Holovaty and Simon Willison as an internal project at the Lawrence Journal-World newspaper.
July 2005	It was released in July 2005 as “Django,” named after the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.
June 2008	It was declared that a Django Software Foundation (DSF) would maintain Django.
29 July 2009	Django 1.1 was released with features like aggregates and transaction-based tests.
17 May 2010	Django 1.2 was released. The update offered features like multiple databases and an email backend, and improvements were made for sessions and cookies.
23 Mar 2011	The 1.3 version introduced features like class-based views and static files.
23 Mar 2012	The 1.4 version launched with new features like time zones and in-browser testing.
26 Feb 2013	The 1.5 version came with Python 3 support and configurable user model features.
6 Nov 2013	The 1.6 version came with database transaction management and connection pooling features.
2 Sep 2014	The 1.7 version had new features like application loading, migrations, and configuration.
1 Apr 2015	Native support was provided for multiple template engines.
1 Dec 2015	In the 1.9 version, an automatic password validation feature was introduced.
1 Aug 2016	In the 1.10 version, full-text search for PostgreSQL was launched.
4 Apr 2017	The 1.11 version became the last version to support Python 2.7.
2 Dec 2017	Version 2.0 became the first Python 3-only release version.
1 Aug 2018	Version 2.1 came with model “view” permission support features.
2021	Removed support for Django 3.0 and added Django 3.2 support.

Now in this Django for beginners tutorial, let us learn about the features of Django.

Features of Django

Below are the features of Django:

• Helps you to define patterns for the URLs in your application.
• Simple but powerful URL system.
• Built-in authentication system.
• An object-oriented programming language database which offers best-in-class data storage and retrieval.
• The automatic admin interface feature allows the functionality of adding, editing, and deleting items. You can customize the admin panel as per your need.
• The cache framework comes with multiple cache mechanisms.

Now in this Django framework tutorial, we will learn about the characteristics of Django.

Characteristics of Django

Here are the main characteristics of Django:

• Loosely coupled – Django helps you to make each element of its stack independent of the others.
• Less code – Ensures effective development.
• Not repeated – Everything should be developed in precisely one place instead of repeating it again.
• Fast development – Django offers fast and reliable application development.
• Consistent design – Django maintains a clean design and makes it easy to follow the best web development practices.

Next in this Django beginner tutorial, we will learn about the architecture of Django.

Django Architecture: MVC and MVT

Below is a detailed architecture of Django:

Django Architecture

MVC Pattern

When talking about applications which provide a UI (web or desktop), we usually talk about MVC architecture. The MVC pattern is based on Model, View, and Controller.

The Model defines the data structure and takes care of querying the database.

The View defines what data should be presented and returns an HTTP response.

The Controller is the part of the application that handles the user interaction.

Django MVC-MVT pattern

The Model-View-Template (MVT) is a different concept compared to MVC. The main difference between these two architectural patterns is that Django itself manages the Controller part (the software code that controls the interactions between the Model and View). The template is an HTML file which is mixed with a Django Template Language file, also called DTL.

The diagram below shows how all the components of the MVT pattern interact with each other to serve a specific user request.

MVT Architecture

As seen in the diagram above, a user requests a resource from Django. Django acts as a controller and checks for the available resource in the URL.

If the URL maps, a view is called that interacts with the model and template. Django then responds to the user and sends a template as a response.

Now in this Django tutorials for beginners series, we will learn about the components of Django.

Components of Django

Form

Django has a powerful form library which handles rendering forms as HTML. The library helps in validating submitted data and converting it to Python types.

Authentication

It handles user accounts, groups, cookie-based user sessions, and more.

Admin

It reads metadata in your models to provide a robust interface which can be used to manage content on your site.

Internationalization

Django provides support for translating text into various languages, and locale-specific formatting of dates, times, numbers, and time zones.

Security

Django provides safeguards against the following attacks:

• Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
• Cross-site scripting
• SQL injection
• Clickjacking
• Remote code execution

Famous Companies Using Django

Here are companies that are using Django:

• Bitbucket
• Disqus
• NASA
• PBS (Public Broadcasting Service)
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Mozilla
• The Washington Post
• The New York Times
• Los Angeles Times
• The Guardian
• National Geographic
• Discovery Channel

Disadvantages of using Django

Here are some disadvantages of using Django:

• A single process cannot handle multiple requests simultaneously.
• Django is a very monolithic tool.
• Components get deployed together, which can create confusion.
• Knowledge of the full system is needed to work on Django.
• It makes web application components tightly coupled.
• You need to do lengthy programming for minor tasks.

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