Final Project Practice

Installing requirements

If you haven’t already, grab the code for our blog from GitHub, create a virtual environment, and install the project requirements.

Make sure you checkout the final_practice branch.

$ git clone https://github.com/nnja/practical_blog.git
$ git checkout final_practice
$ cd practical_blog
$ python3 -m venv env
$ source env/bin/activate
(env) $ python -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Next, start the development server

(env) $ python manage.py runserver

You should see:

Django version 3.1, using settings 'practical_blog.settings'
Starting development server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Visit the server at http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to make sure everything started correctly.

Final Exercise

For the final exercise, we’re going to: 1. Sort our blog posts by reverse chronological order 1. Add anis_draft flag that allows you to start working on blog posts but keep them from being seen by readers. 1. (If time allows) Write additional unit tests to make sure that is_draft is working as expected.

Sorting in reverse order

We can provide a default sort order for our model by adding some metadata through it via Django’s nested Meta class.

in blog/models.py, add:

from django.db import models

class Post(models.Model):
    # ... fields here.

    class Meta:
        ordering = ('-created_at', )

Notice a few things: 1. This is a nested class under Post, so make sure it’s indented properly 1. ordering expects a tuple, so don’t forget that trailing comma.

Make sure your server is running

python manage.py runserver

Reload the page. Your posts should now be in reverse chronological order.

Adding is_draft

First, we’ll need to add a new is_draft flag to our post model, make migrations, and run them.

We’ll provide a default value of False, and Django will fill in that column in the database for us when it runs the migration.

In blog/models.py add the following field to the Post class.

is_draft = models.BooleanField(default=False)

Make migrations for the blog app, then run them:

(env) $ python manage.py makemigrations blog 
(env) $ python manage.py migrate blog

Now, verify that the current blog posts have a draft status of False by using the Django shell command, and importing the models.

(env) $ python manage.py shell

>>> from blog.models import Post

Remember, Post.objects.all() will return all of the models in our database as a QuerySet. You can loop over the items, just like you would a list to examine their values.

>>> Post.objects.all()
<QuerySet [<Post: First Post!>, <Post: second blog post>]>

Modifying our views to not return draft posts

We’ll need to modify our views so that draft posts aren’t visible to the user.

In class based views, all you need to do is define a custom queryset.

In blog/views.py:

class PostListView(ListView):
    model = Post
    queryset = Post.objects.filter(is_draft=False)


class PostDetailView(DetailView):
    model = Post
    queryset = Post.objects.filter(is_draft=False)

(Optional, if time) Writing more Unit Tests

Now, if you have time, you’ll want to write some unit tests to verify that posts in draft status aren’t visible on the main page, and that trying to get to the detail page for a draft post will return in a 404.

If you need some hints, check out the final_practice_solutions branch.

Going Further with Django

If you’d like to go even further on your Django journey after the course, try some of the following challenges that are outside the scope of today’s lesson on your own.

Here are a few ideas that you can start with: - Add a simple form to submit comments (use DjangoGirls as a guide https://tutorial-extensions.djangogirls.org/en/homework_create_more_models) - Add Blog post tags. Each blog post can be tagged with different categories. Add a page to the blog with a list of tags along with the Posts in each category. - Add pagination so that only 10 posts show on the main page, have a previous and a next button. - Make the blog look nicer by styling it with CSS.

Note: If you’d like to see a standalone Django course, you can request it from Frontend Masters via Twitter or e-mail at support@frontendmasters.com.