This article presents a short list of the most popular libraries for Django, a versatile framework suitable for projects of any size, from small websites to large-scale enterprise applications. Django offers excellent documentation, a large and active community, and a vast ecosystem of reusable apps and packages.
It includes built-in protection against many common web application vulnerabilities, such as cross-site scripting (XSS), cross-site request forgery (CSRF), and SQL injection.
Django Rest Framework
DRF is a powerful and flexible toolkit for building Web APIs. It's a go-to choice for creating RESTful APIs in Django, offering features like serialization, authentication, and viewsets.
Usage for creating a simple API view:
from rest_framework.views import APIView
from rest_framework.response import Response
class HelloWorldView(APIView):
def get(self, request):
return Response({"message": "Hello, World!"})
Django Crispy Forms
Django Crispy Forms lets you control the rendering behavior of your Django forms in a very elegant and DRY way. It provides a way to define form layouts programmatically and render them using various CSS frameworks.
Usage of a Crispy Form in a Template:
{% load crispy_forms_tags %}
<form method="post">
{% csrf_token %}
{{ form|crispy }}
<button type="submit">Submit</button>
</form>
Django Debug Toolbar
The Django Debug Toolbar is a configurable set of panels that display various debug information about the current request/response and when clicked, display more details about the panel's content.
Configuration in settings.py:
INSTALLED_APPS = [ # ... 'debug_toolbar', ] MIDDLEWARE = [ # ... 'debug_toolbar.middleware.DebugToolbarMiddleware', ] INTERNAL_IPS = [ '127.0.0.1', ]
Django Allauth
Django Allauth is an integrated set of Django applications addressing authentication, registration, account management, and third-party (social) account authentication. It provides a unified solution for handling user accounts in Django projects.
Configuration in settings.py:
INSTALLED_APPS = [ # ... 'django.contrib.sites', 'allauth', 'allauth.account', 'allauth.socialaccount', ] AUTHENTICATION_BACKENDS = [ 'django.contrib.auth.backends.ModelBackend', 'allauth.account.auth_backends.AuthenticationBackend', ] SITE_ID = 1
Django Celery
Celery is an asynchronous task queue/job queue based on distributed message passing. It's focused on real-time operation but supports scheduling as well. When integrated with Django, it allows you to run time-consuming Python functions in the background.
Configuration in settings.py:
from celery import Celery
app = Celery('myproject')
app.config_from_object('django.conf:settings', namespace='CELERY')
app.autodiscover_tasks()
@app.task(bind=True)
def debug_task(self):
print(f'Request: {self.request!r}')
These libraries significantly extend Django's capabilities, enabling developers to build more complex and feature-rich applications with less effort.
For more information related to Django, feel free to access:
- Getting Started with Django - a comprehensive guide for beginners
- Pick a Django Starter and speed up your development