First Things To Do on a New Django Project

I found myself doing several of these things over and over when creating a new Django project, so I made a script that wraps the django-admin.py startproject command. Some of these tips I don't quite understand, like creating a custom authentication backend (I've only had to do this once), and creating global template context processor and middleware files. I prefer to keep those bundled individually with the app that uses it. Also, not all of my apps use forms, so why would I make a forms.py for each app?

My package is on github here: http://github.com/dziegler/django-create-project/tree/master

There's not much documentation because I wasn't really expecting anyone but myself to use it, but basically once it's installed, it'll install a binary file in your path. So instead of

  django-admin.py startproject project_name

you would do

  create_project project_name

It'll auto-create your wsgi handler, an apps, templates, static/css, static/js, static/images directories, create a localsettings file, and update your settings. It also automatically installs some common django apps I like to use, like django-command-extensions, django-debug-toolbar, django-css, and clevercss. Like I said, I wasn't really planning on other people finding this valuable and using it, so some of these options are customized to my preferences and you'd probably have to hack it a little bit, but maybe someone here will find it helpful.

There's also http://bitbucket.org/neithere/django-harness/src/ which I think might do some similar things, but I found out about it after I already rolled my own thing which works pretty well for me.

Creating a single project wide middleware / context processor file doesn't make sense - each application should provide specific functionality to the project don't group it into a single middleware or context processor.

Look at the django.contrib applications. They are perfect examples of how you should structure your apps. The authentication middleware is in django.contrib.auth. etc.

If you are automatically deleting models.py, views.py, forms.py your doing it all wrong - rarely should an application get large enough to require these changes to application structure in django.

Again django.contrib.admin is the only application that has a views/ directory because it has so many permutations to make generic functionality available to most users.

One thing I would like to add is that I think django-admin.py for projects should create the templates directory and static directory when starting a project. It should also generate forms.py, urls.py (not mentioned in the article) and a templates directory for apps.

> Delete models.py and create a models folder > Delete views.py and create a views folder.

I think these are a sign that your applications are too big. I'm biased, but I would use http://chris-lamb.co.uk/projects/django-lint/ over whilst fleshing out the models (which reports on exactly this issue).

I don't understand why most developers would use a custom auth system. Django's auth system worked fine for me... I just added a UserProfile model to supplement with more fields.

Trying to turn Django development into a cookie cutter process seems silly.

Do it your own way. Learn it. Understand it. Django is a magical and powerful beast that can be used in many wonderful ways.