Django, the Python-based equivalent to Ruby’s Rails Web development framework, is currently one of the hottest topics in Web development. Practical Django Projects introduces key features of this framework by way of guiding the reader through several real-world projects such as a content management system, blogging solution, and social networking website. This new edition brings the book up to date with Django 1.1, and adds a new chapter on unit testing in Django.This book is authored by James Bennett, who plays a major role in the Django project as release manager of Django, and a key contributor.See the following resources for more information on Django project
It was a handy read 10 years ago when I wrote Python and Django.
The book is nothing too impressive. "Practical X projects" books are out there to help you learn new technologies by building various projects. Why figure out projects yourself when you don't even know much as a junior? Let someone take the creative wheel and actually focus on learning the craft.
Why 3 stars? The code snippets are hard to follow, and the book is dated, too. It was already slightly dated when I was reading it. I used it for its projects.
It's a much denser book than you might expect - at around 200 pages it seems short, but it covers a lot material. Sometimes it seems that it's glossing over some important things - for example, get_absolute_url is used without any explanation of it's role in the django framework. I think this book is intended to be used in combination with a django reference, and it can be a little confusing on it's own. And it suffers a little from the fact that django is still in flux, since 1.0 hasn't been officially released yet.
That said, it's a very good introduction to actually *using* django. The on-line django book often explains a concept in too much generality - introducing a concept first and then explaining what a real django programmer would do only at the end of a chapter. This book doesn't spend much time explaining the underlying concepts - instead it focuses on real world examples - which I found preferable. For example, when I created my first project using the on-line reference as my guide, I didn't use any of django's generic views. But they are a real time saver, and clearly would form the foundation for any real django project, and Practical Django Projects makes frequent use of them. It has the only good discussion of newforms (destined to be just "forms", when 1.0 is released) I've found anywhere. It has a great example of how to set up your urls.py. Overall, if you're a budding django programmer, I would recommend this book.
As always, tech books are to be taken with a grain of salt. By the time you read it, it's probably out of date. (As is the case here.) Still... I would recommend django and this book as a starter drug into the world of python and web dev for folks who do Java or .NET for a living. (Especially you older cats like me.)
A good hands-on run through of working with django. In fact its title describes the content perfectly: practical django projects. The first edition suffered a little from poor timing in its release date so make sure you get the second edition which is updated for 1.0 has some additional chapters, e.g. on deployment.