Material Kit PRO

Material Kit PRO#

Free starter built on Bootstrap and Django with database, authentication, and Docker support. The Material Kit PRO design is crafted by Creative-Tim using Bootstrap 5 Framework.

👉 New to App-Generator? Join our 10k+ Community using GitHub One-Click SignIN.

Features#

  • Simple, Easy-to-Extend codebase

  • Material Kit PRO Full Integration

  • Bootstrap 4 Styling

  • Session-based Authentication

  • DB Persistence: SQLite/MySql/PostgreSQL

  • Docker

  • CI/CD integration for Render

Django Material Kit PRO - Open-source Starter styled with Material Kit PRO design

Prerequisites#

A few tools need to be installed in the system to use the starter efficiently:

  • Python

  • A modern code editor like VsCode, or Sublime

  • (optional) GIT - for pulling the source code and work under a version control system

  • (optional) Docker for isolated execution

  • (optional) DB Servers: - MySql - PostgreSQL

Download Source Code#

Access the product page and complete the purchase. Unpack the ZIP archive and folow these steps:

unzip material-argon-dashboard-pro.zip
cd material-argon-dashboard-pro

Once the source code is unzipped, the next step is to start it and use provided features.

Project Files#
< Project ROOT >
    |
    |
    |-- core/
    |    |-- settings.py                  # Project Configuration
    |    |-- urls.py                      # Project Routing
    |
    |-- home/
    |    |-- views.py                     # APP Views
    |    |-- urls.py                      # APP Routing
    |    |-- models.py                    # APP Models
    |    |-- tests.py                     # Tests
    |    |-- templates/                   # Theme Customisation
    |         |-- includes                # UI Components
    |
    |-- requirements.txt                  # Project Dependencies
    |
    |-- env.sample                        # ENV Configuration (default values)
    |-- manage.py                         # Start the app - Django default start script

Building the project#

It’s best to use a Python Virtual Environment for installing the project dependencies. You can use the following code to create the virtual environment

virtualenv env

To activate the environment execute envScriptsactivate.bat for Windows or source env/bin/activate on Linux-based operating systems.

Having the VENV active, we can proceed and install the project dependencies:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Core Dependencies#

The starter requires the following in order to be succesfully started:

  • Python 3.10 (or above)

  • (Optional) Git command line - used by the versioning system

  • (Optional) MySql or PostgreSQL DB Servers - if the default SQLite is not enough

  • A modern code editor like VsCode or Sublime

The python version can be easily check in the terminal by typing:

python --version
Python 3.12.0

Environment Settings#

The starter loads the environment variables from .env file. Here are the critical ones:

  • DEBUG: set by default to False (development mode)

  • SECRET_KEY: a random value used by Django to secure sensitive information like passwords and cookie information

  • Database Credentials: DB_ENGINE, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASS, DB_HOST, DB_PORT, DB_NAME

    • if detected, the database is switched automatically from the default SQLite to the specified DBMS

Setting up the Database#

By default, the application uses SQLite for persistence. In order to use MySql/PostgreSQL, you’ll need to install the Python driver(s):

pip install mysqlclient # for MySql
# OR
pip install psycopg2    # for PostgreSQL

To connect the application with your mySQL database, you’ll need to fill in the credentials int the .env file and run the migrations.

.env#
DB_ENGINE=mysql
# OR
DB_ENGINE=postgresql

# DB credentials below
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_NAME=<DB_NAME_HERE>
DB_USERNAME=<DB_USER_HERE>
DB_PASS=<DB_PASS_HERE>
DB_PORT=3306

Use the following commands to seed your data:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Running the project#

You can run Rocket Django locally or deploy it on Render. If you want to run the server locally, you’ll need to run the following command:

python manage.py createsuperuser
python manage.py runserver

Open localhost on your browser and you can interact with the application.

Django Material Kit PRO - Open-source Starter styled with Material Kit PRO design