Starting Your First Project - potatoscript/django GitHub Wiki

🧑‍💻 Step 1: Create Your Django Project Folder

Before we get started, we need a special space for your project. This is like creating a new folder to keep your school assignments organized! 🎒

1. Open your Command Prompt (Windows) or Terminal (Mac/Linux).
2. Let’s create a folder for our new Django project. Type:

mkdir mysite
cd mysite

This makes a folder called mysite and enters it.
Now you’re ready to start building your project!

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🧩 Step 2: Create a New Django Project

Now that you have your folder, let’s use Django to set up your project.

1. Run the following command:

django-admin startproject mysite .

What did we just do?

• startproject: Tells Django to start a new project.
• mysite: The name of your project (You can change this to anything you like).
• .: Means the project files will be created right in the folder you’re in (no new folder created).

Now, inside your mysite/ folder, you’ll see:

File	What It Does
manage.py	The magic file that controls your project (like a remote control).
mysite/	This folder contains the actual project code.
settings.py	This is where you set up rules for your project, like language, timezone, etc.
urls.py	Defines the URLs (links) that users can visit on your website.
wsgi.py	For running the project on a server (we won’t need this yet!).

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🔥 Step 3: Run the Django Development Server

Time to see your project live! 🖥️

1. In your Terminal, inside the mysite/ folder, run:

python manage.py runserver

2. You should see something like this:

Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.

3. Open your web browser, and type:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/

You should see the magical Django “It worked!” page.
This means your project is alive and kicking! 🎉

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📝 Step 4: Understand the Project Files

Let’s break down the important files in your project:

1. mysite/settings.py
   This is like the control center for your project. You’ll tell Django what your website should look like, what database to use, and more.

2. mysite/urls.py
   This file helps Django know what to do when someone types a URL. It’s like a map for your website! You’ll connect views (pages) to specific URLs here.

3. manage.py
   This is your remote control. Every time you want to run something in Django (like starting the server or making changes), you’ll use manage.py to tell Django what to do.

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🌱 Step 5: Create Your First App

Now that your project is up and running, let’s build an App inside it! 🎨

What’s an App?
An App is like a small piece of your website that does one specific job. It can be something like a Blog, Login page, or Store.
For now, let’s build a simple one called hello.

1. In the Terminal, run:

python manage.py startapp hello

This will create a new folder called hello in your project with files like:

File	What It Does
views.py	This is where you write the code that shows what to display on the page.
urls.py (We’ll create this)	Where you connect URLs to views (the map we talked about).

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🧑‍💻 Step 6: Create Your First View

Let’s create a view for your hello app. Views are like the pages on your website.

1. Open hello/views.py and add this code:

from django.http import HttpResponse

def home(request):
    return HttpResponse("Hello, welcome to my Django website! 🎉")

This view says: "When someone goes to this page, show them ‘Hello, welcome to my Django website! 🎉’".

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📍 Step 7: Link the View to a URL

Now let’s make this view show up when someone visits the website.

1. In the hello/ folder, create a new file called urls.py. Inside hello/urls.py, add this code:

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.home),
]

This code says: "When someone goes to the homepage (/), show the home view."

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🧭 Step 8: Link Your App to the Main URL File

Now we need to tell the main project about the new hello app and its URLs.

1. Open mysite/urls.py, and change it to look like this:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('hello.urls')),  # Link the hello app here!
]

This tells Django: "When someone goes to the homepage, go to hello.urls."

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🎉 Step 9: See It in Action

1. Make sure the server is still running:

python manage.py runserver

2. Open your web browser again and go to:

http://127.0.0.1:8000/

🎉 You should now see: "Hello, welcome to my Django website! 🎉"

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