I was lucky enough to receive an early review copy of “Django 5 by Example” by Antonio Melé. I had already read his previous book “Django 4 by Example”, so I was able to compare both versions. Please note that this early copy only contains the first seven chapters of the book.
I really enjoyed this book, as I preferred it to the books “Django for Beginners” and “Django for Professionals”, but that’s only my own preference. Anyway, I think that more topics of Django are covered in the current book.
This new edition is using the latest release of Django, but its content has also been reviewed. The content is very similar to the previous edition and still contains the same four projects. However, the content is not identical of course and I’m sure that a lot of time has been dedicated to deliver an even better edition.
I don’t expect the whole book to be much bigger than the previous one. However, it contains a lot of small enhancements. The Python version and all libraries used in the book and in the repository are up-to-date. As the book is about Django 5, it introduces its new major features (facet filters, simplified form field rendering, database-computed default values, …).
Along the book, some explanations have been added about technical details, about the choices to implement features in a way or another. As in the previous edition, at the end of each chapter, the book lists its references to the officials Django documentation. That’s a nice idea from the author.
I really appreciated the effort to explain at the beginning of each chapter what the reader should accomplish with the help of a functional overview. Each time, an explanation is given about what will be implemented in the project and how. You can also find more UML-like schemas of the models used in the different projects. This effort helps the reader to better understand what the code is about and what is expected from the application/project.
At several places, instructions have been added to help the reader in the implementation of the projects. Some of the implementation steps, although quite obvious, were missing. This has now been fixed. The code is now closer to code that could be used in a production environment. Some concepts like environment variables and docker containers are introduced quite early in the book.
The book has also been slightly restructured, as some paragraphs have been moved to better places. Each concept is brought in at the right moment. The code is now closer to the PEP-8 guidelines, which is a nice upgrade compared to previous versions.
Finally, as this is a hot topic, the book also makes some references to AI and how the project could be enhanced with the help of AI, but that’s a task that is given to the user and to find out by himself/herself.
This book should be a fit for beginners as for more experienced Django developers. Most of the Django topics are covered. If there is something missing, in my opinion, it’s the topic about testing. Is there a chance that testing will be covered in a future edition ? However, there are other books that deliver this mission.
Enjoyable reading, with a lot of explanations through the implementation of four Django projects.