Re: Big Picture?

Hi,

I have a diagram I call big picture, you might find it useful (see attachment).

Anything green is most of the time provided by the framework at least it is the case in Django.

Anything gray you have to make a choice for.

Anything blue is your code.

Arrows are kind of inspired snakes I'm not sure of the meaning of each of them ;)

2013/7/7 ron <ron@ronallensmith.com>

I need help with getting the big picture in so far as what Django can help me accomplish.

Have a look at Django CMS: mezzanine, djangocms amstrongcms. There is also a nice demo of django xadmin.

 

I need to replace an antiquated online attendance-taking system. My first thought was to just build from scratch using Apache, Python, MySQL, HTML/JavaScript.

Sounds like a lot of work (see next answer)

 

My first stop was researching how to integrate Python and Apache, but that led me down the rabbit hole of programming.

Python interface itself with servers using the WSGI protocol, this might help. Also there is a framework I'm working on (not tested with Apache but should work) that might give insight on what is needed to get a framework up.

 

I kept running across using "Frameworks". From my reading so far, I can't determine if Django, as a framework, will yeild any advantage over just implementing the standalone bits and pieces.

Yes it will provide :)

 

I'm putting out the word, here on the kist, for direction in this matter. My mail confusion is, does Django ome with its own database, and is this the same type database that I'm referring to to when I mentioned doing this task using the autonomous pieces?

I'm not sure I fully understand what you mean here but I try to answer. Django was built from the ground up to contains everything needed to build a CMS with. This is not anymore True as-is, since there are now somewhat common componenent of a website that are not part of Django but developped outside, at least the following are very helpful:

- Django compressor

- South

- Django debug toolbar

- Sentry

- Django social auth

- Celery

- Haystack

- There are e-commerce django appliations but I have no insight on them

- Django crispy forms is getting some traction

You don't have to use them, but you might need them, just like Django Admin.

And a miriad of other application that can help you in your developpement at least to bootstrap your project commonly known as django applications. Those are specific to Django, aka. most of the time you can't use them with other frameworks. There is different kind of apps, apps that provides user features, other that are only technical, some of them also are useful goodies (django debug toolbar, django extended choices) etc... all this makes developpement and learning easier because most of the time you have something to copy or learn from and loads of documentation and people that can help.

As far as I'm concerned, I went to (somewhat) autonomous pieces route by reusing what is done by others because I want to experiement with a somewhat new API (and learn new stuff). Rolling it's own framework is not difficult if you reuse pieces from others, but you have to have a good idea of what you want to achieve and what your solution will make easier (for a specific case?). If you have very specific needs and you know what you are doing go explore other frameworks mostly Pyramid which is said to be easy to customise and scales well or mini-frameworks which have their community too and share ressources among the rest of Python community that said you won't always benefit from Django ecosystem. If you want to get things done, Django is an answer.

Also, I might sound a Django enthusiastic fanboy, but I'm not, I find it's has many flows not major flows but still thing could be nicer, more elegant et al. and other stuff. In my case the «ecosystem is great» is not appealing, most of the time I can handle issues on my own, or adapt stuff from a Django solution, but for starter, it's a game changer. Anyway, if I want to build something right now, I use Django and it's not only because I know it, but also because there is this great ecosystem and also it answers most of the requirements I encounter.

another link: https://www.djangopackages.com/

HTH,

Amirouche

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