PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
Setting up a Django development environment
The development environment is an installation of Django on your local
computer that you can use for developing and testing Django apps prior to
deploying them to a production environment.
The main tools that Django itself provides are a set of Python scripts for creating
and working with Django projects, along with a simple development webserver
that you can use to test local (i.e. on your computer, not on an external web
server) Django web applications on your computer's web browser.
Installing Python on Windows 10 or 11
Windows doesn't include Python by default, but you can easily install it from
https://www.python.org
Download the required installer:
Go to https://www.python.org/downloads/windows
Download the most recent supported version of Python e.g. 3.11 that works
with latest version of Django which is 4.1.2
Install Python by double-clicking on the downloaded file and following the
installation prompts
Be sure to check the box labeled "Add Python to PATH"
Verifying the Python Installation
You can then verify that Python 3 was installed by entering the following text
into the command prompt
py -3 -V
Installing Django on the local machine
PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
Issue the following command on the command prompt
pip3 install django
For specific version of Django, you can also specify the version number
pip3 install django~=4.0
Verifying the Django installation on Windows
py -3 -m django --version
Verifying the Django installation on Linux Distributions
python3 -m django --version
Testing your installation
To test whether the Django environment is functional and ready to create
Django projects, we need to perform the following steps
Make some directory on the command prompt in the root directory any drive
and then go inside of it
mkdir django_test
cd django_test
Now let’s try to create a new blank project with given Skelton using
django-admin tool. Assuming the project name as mytestsite, issue the
following command on the command prompt
django-admin startproject mytestsite
It creates a project folder with some sub folders and files for you
PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
Go inside the folder using cd mytestsite command
Use dir command to view the files and folders in current directory
Run the server using following command
python manage.py runserver
PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
Open the web browser and give the following URL to test your sample website
on local machine
http://127.0.0.1:8000/
It will show the following screen
It means your Django Environment Setup is complete and you can start creating
web applications using Django Framework.
Creating super user or administrator for your website administration
Every website is managed by super user or administrator
Issue the following command in your project directory to create the super
user
python manage.py createsuperuser
It will ask you username, email id and password then retype the password.
Password will not be displayed (Don’t worry).
PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
Now you can login to admin segment of the website using following user
http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin
Enter the userid and password to enter to admin section
PDP 103 | PDP Session 03 | Django Session 02
It means your server is ready to work. Here we can add more users, create
groups and other advance operations to be discussed in next sessions.
