18.11. Django Templates: Deploying Django Applications
The creation of systems with Python and Django is a process that involves several steps, among them, the use of templates and the deployment of applications. In this chapter, we'll explore how Django handles templates and how to deploy your applications.
Templates in Django
Django provides a powerful and flexible templating system. Templates are a crucial part of a Django application, as they allow developers to separate programming logic from data presentation. In other words, templates are responsible for the presentation layer of your application.
Django templates are written in a language that Django can interpret. This language includes tags, variables and filters, which allow you to manipulate the data that will be displayed on the page.
To create a Django template, you need to create a file with the .html extension and place it in your project's templates folder. Django will look for templates in this folder when rendering a page.
Tags and Variables
Tags are used to execute logic in the template. For example, you can use the {% for %} tag to iterate over a list of items. Variables, on the other hand, are used to display data. You can use the {{ variable }} syntax to display the value of a variable.
Filters
Filters allow you to modify the way data is displayed. For example, you can use the filter {{ variable|date:"D d M Y" }} to format a date. Django provides a large number of filters that you can use in your templates.
Deploying Django applications
Once you've developed your Django application, the next step is to put it online so that other people can access it. This process is known as deploy.
Django is not a web server, so to deploy a Django application, you will need a web server that can serve your application. There are many web servers you can use such as Apache, Nginx, Gunicorn and others.
You will also need a database to store your application data. Django supports many databases such as PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite and others.
Server Configuration
To deploy a Django application, you need to configure the server to serve your application. This involves installing Django and your application's dependencies on the server, configuring the server to serve your application, and setting up the database.
Updating the Application
When you make changes to your application, you need to update the version of the application being served by the server. This usually involves copying the new application files to the server and restarting the server.
In short, Django provides a powerful and flexible templating system that lets you separate programming logic from data presentation. Furthermore, deploying a Django application involves setting up a web server to serve your application and a database to store your data.
We hope this chapter has given you a good overview of working with templates and deploying Django applications. In the next chapter, we'll explore more details about working with Django.
