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Web developers are always looking for Django packages that will speed up their Django development. Django being an open-source Python web framework has some great modules/packages which can help in speeding up the web development process.
Django modules have a main purpose to be reusable Django apps that can perform specific tasks, which will save Django developers’ time. Django has a great community, who have created thousands of useful Django packages over the years, so new Django developers can easily pick up these new Django apps and start using them instead of spending time on creating their own from scratch. There are many Django modules available depending on your project’s requirements such as Djoser – admin interface, Django Batch Jobs import, etc., but you have to choose wisely otherwise it may create more issues than solving them for your Django website. Django modules have a very critical Django project structure, as Django apps are already complex to maintain. Therefore Django module’s architecture also should be well organized and managed correctly if you want your Django website to run smoothly.
The following is the list of some useful packages to develop your Django websites faster.
– Django Debug Toolbar is an interactive graphical browser, with a set of tools to help debug your Django application. The toolbar adds a panel on top of each page in your site, showing database queries executed by your site and how long it took for each query to execute so you can see exactly where the bottlenecks are in your site. A big benefit is that you can easily compare performance between several versions of your sites or apps, or even the Django Debug toolbar can also compare two different sites on separate Django servers.
– Django Admin is Django’s admin system that provides a simple yet powerful interface to manage your Django models. Django admin is highly customisable and it comes with many useful features out of the box, but if you are looking for some custom functionality there are lots of third-party Django admin apps, which will work perfectly with your Django project. Django Admin allows you to set up an efficient backend of any complex data structure within minutes. Django Admin is very easy to install and use, anyone who has basic knowledge about Django can easily start using it right away without having to study long manuals first.
– Celery allows users to run tasks that would normally block their request. Django admin doesn’t support background tasks, which will cause Django to load slowly. Django’s database abstraction layer doesn’t allow you to run custom database queries outside Django ORM. Celery is a great Django app that allows Django developers to use it without blocking requests, easily adding background tasks into Django website. When using Celery with Django, you can create and schedule celery tasks from django-admin and then require some code modifications in your view or form classes.
– Matplotlib is a python module for plotting scientific charts and figures in Python scripts. Matplotlib provides both high-level object-oriented API as well as low-level drawing functions. Matplotlib add an option to add graphs inside Django templates instead of writing javascript charts or server-side graphs scripts. Django Matplotlib package is essential for Django sites when they need to add graphs and plots in their web pages.
– Django Rest Framework is another powerful package for Django developers that provides an easy way to build web APIs for their Django websites. Django Rest Framework follows the DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) principle which is a source of many Python packages design philosophy is its ability to avoid unnecessary duplication by allowing you to reuse existing code with minimum effort. Django Rest Framework will remove the need for manually coding standard views and serializers which improves productivity during the development process. It is a must-have Django package when building complex Django websites that require well-defined APIs. Django Rest Framework also simplifies Django website’s frontend implementation as it has built-in Django templates for HTML responses and Django views for HTTP requests, which helps to speed up the development process.
– Django Testing Framework is another important Django package that will save your time testing Django websites, through its powerful capabilities Django Testing Framework allows you to test almost everything related to Django project’s functionality, such as pages’ behavior or user inputs, etc., Django Testing Framework works great with other popular Python based frameworks such as PyTest, Nose , Selenium, etc.
– South is a crucial part of any Django project migration process, but most existing Django developers don’t always have time to create one from scratch so Django migrations modules come to the rescue. Django South is a Django database migration tool that allows Django developers to easily upgrade or downgrade Django databases by editing Django models’ fields. Another benefit of Django’s using the south module is the ability to store your Django project’s settings in its database, which gives you more control over your Django project settings.
– Bower is one of many front-end tools that help speed up the development process by automating a lot of tasks such as finding and installing Django package dependencies in your Django project. Bower is a very powerful front-end dependency manager that is widely used with NodeJS but has also been ported to Python by using the bower Django helper module for Django projects.
– Backbone JS is a popular JavaScript framework that can be used with any other Python based frameworks such as Flask or Django. Backbone JS is famous for its lightweight structure and MVC architecture that makes debugging much easier when compared to other javascript frameworks. Django Backbone JS Packages helps Django developers to use this lightweight framework within Django projects, they can also attach models and Django views directly together for their websites’ front-end implementation.
– Bootstrap is another Django package that most Django developers should have in their Django project’s third-party libraries list. Just like other great open-source packages such as Formidable JS, Bootstrap is a necessity when it comes to Django website design and usability. It contains HTML and CSS-based design templates for typography, forms, buttons, navigation, and other components, grids, and dozens of other interface components, icons, etc.
– Material Design Lite Django Material Design Lite Package allows you to add material design lite elements into your Django website without any hassle, this Django package is mobile friendly and can be used to create modern web interfaces. Django Material Design Lite Django Package uses HTML5 Boilerplate responsive front-end framework which helps developers get started building modern websites fast. It has its own CSS file that helps put all the material design lite elements in one place, but if you want to take full advantage of this Django package it’s recommended to build additional custom components using MaterializeCSS
– Django utils is another great module designed to make Django web development process easier by providing basic utilities for some common tasks you have in every Django projects such as handling different types of files, managing settings, handling logging etc so you can focus on Django Django development most important aspects.
There are many hundreds of modules and package to choose from when utilising Django to speed up your development process. Raw Jam has worked on numerous projects over the past 15 years, to help clients spin out functional-rich and secure sites, utilising the Django CMS.
If you’re already using Django or you are serious about utilising the platform for your business ,talk to us, we’d be happy to advise you on the best way forward.