Django is a powerful Python Web Framework that enables rapid development, robust database
management, and many built-in tools to make building your app more accessible. Let's analyze
all that Django offers in building our next web app.
management, and many built-in tools to make building your app more accessible. Let's analyze
all that Django offers in building our next web app.
Django is the right choice for building a secure web application for several reasons, primarily
because of its optimum security features; the fact that much of the backend code for the
application is already written in Python, the user gets the application ready to go on a tight
deadline. There is no denying that Django is, after all, the "web framework for perfectionists
with deadlines."
It is best to say that Django is a general-purpose framework that supports different scenarios and
solves various problems. As such, the Django developers decided that having a project capable
of encapsulating multiple apps would benefit the community. Enabling this type of nesting
allows developers to create and share standard features (and settings) among different apps. This
facilitates the development process when you are using Django to solve complex applications,
but it can be awkward for smaller projects.
We can take full advantage of Django's many built-in features to create a robust, scalable
application with an attractive UI. It is a great idea to rely on Django's ORM (Object Relational
Mapper) and the Django Rest Framework, building a RESTful API to support the end-user
product. To ensure security and user confidentiality, we use Django's native security features and
JSON Web Tokens. Finally, Django's prime features allow us to develop a high-performance
browser-based UI quickly.
Choosing to implement a RESTful application architecture using the Django REST Framework
as it is highly scalable and works conveniently with various data formats. Being web-based, it
relies on HTTP to transfer data; thus, any tool that can use HTTP can work with REST
resources. With HTTP, locating data sources with REST is quite simple using URIs (Uniform
Resource Identifier), allowing a more excellent decoupling between backend and frontend
elements.
Among many other reasons why we prefer using Django, one most important reason is Django's
REST Framework is its discoverable API browser which saves a lot of time, provides pagination,
related resources, and much, much more.
Django offers great features for interacting with SQL databases, most notably its ORM (Object
Relational Mapper), which allows developers to access and manipulate data directly in their
Python code without writing cumbersome SQL statements. With its ORM, Django brings more
to the table.
However, it's equally important to note and understand that the ORM is strongly oriented toward
SQL databases. That's not to say you can't use NoSQL databases with Django – tools like the
Django MongoDB Engine do exist – but you will have to do a bit more work and use some extra
software.
Besides features for developing a REST API, the Django REST Framework also provides
serializers. Serializers allow complex data, such as query sets and model instances, to be
converted to native Python datatypes that can then be quickly rendered into JSON, XML, or
other content types. Serializers also provide deserialization, converting parsed data back into
complex types.
converted to native Python datatypes that can then be quickly rendered into JSON, XML, or
other content types. Serializers also provide deserialization, converting parsed data back into
complex types.
As we speak of data and database queries, it's essential to mention migrations in Django.
Migrations are Django's way of propagating changes to models (new tabs, columns, etc.) to the
database scheme. Usually, Django handles this automatically, making these changes easy and
efficient.
Protecting user confidentiality Security is a high priority with Django. We can take sole
advantage of several characteristics and features of Django, along with some extra tools to make
sure the application would more than adequately protect user confidentiality. Django's ORM
layer makes for a great defense against SQL injection, while Django's built-in CSRF protection
is top-notch. In addition, we used JSON Web Tokens to provide extra security between the UI
and the backend, effectively preventing XSS attacks.
To protect user accounts, we took advantage of Django's multi-factor authentication. The Django
REST Framework provides the base, token, and session-based authentication right out of the
box. However, plenty of other third-party Django packages are well-proven and have rich
documentation.
For any large-scale web application, rigorous testing is vital to ensure reliability and proper
functionality, even in edge cases. You can never really be sure how your application might get
used in production!
Django offers several benefits in this arena, with a convenient mechanism to start a test server,
copy data from the database, and load fixtures in the DB. Django also includes its own test client,
which lets you imitate a web browser programmatically. Basically, you can quickly and easily
launch a complete testing environment with different test execution and start developing
thoroughly automated testing scenarios. The Django REST Framework also proved to be of great
help in testing, providing ready-to-go test classes for a wide variety of cases.
All in all, Django proves to be a great choice; thanks to its built-in features, we are able to
deliver a high-quality product on a short deadline. We're looking forward to our next chance to
work with Django, and with our experience in Big Data & Analytics, we're confident we can
handle the most demanding data-driven web applications.
