Demystifying the Django Folder Structure: A Guide for Developers

Introduction:

Do you know already that Django is a powerful Python web framework, Django is well known for its clean and well-defined structure. we have defined in our previous post and, we have created our first project called myproject. If you are new to this blog and want to join the Django full course You can check our following post to understand how to install Django and create the first Django Project. In this post, we will understand the Django folder structure which is really crucial for any Django developer, or any framework learner as well. This guide delves into its essential components, best practices, and a practical example step by step.

Install Django on Windows

If you are new to Django, let me explain, Django is a high level Python web framework. It is famous for it is simplicity and versatility making developers preferred their best choice worldwide…

The Heart of the Project: The Django Application Folder

Within your Django myproject’s root directory, you will find individual Django application folders. Each file and folder represents a specific functionality of a Django web app. This modular approach keeps your code organized and allows for independent development and testing of each application. When we created “myproject” in the previous post, you would have found the following default Django structure:

myproject/
       └── myproject/
                  ├── __init__.py
                  ├── asgi.py
                  ├── settings.py
                  ├── urls
                  ├── wsgi.py
├── manage.py

But this time, we will understand the manage.py, settings.py, and urls.py files which is in the myproject directory.

• manage.py: This file is used as a command-line utility in Django. It is used for various tasks like running the development server means running our Django project, creating applications, (later on we will learn how to create Django applications), and manage.py file manage the database migrations, creating superusers, running tests, and also interacting with the Django shell. Don’t worry about anything we learn also about databases and migrations as well this time only focus on these three files. but you also don’t worry about the manage.py file because it manages the Django development server itself.
• settings.py: This is a configuration file in our Django project that contains important settings for the project such as database, static files, middleware, setup API, and more, It means the settings.py file controls the complete project. Developers can use it to customize project behavior and features.
• urls.py: This file defines the URL patterns of the Django application. It maps incoming URLs to specific views in your views.py file. But again don’t worry about the views.py file later on we will discuss the views.py file as well. Just understand we define URLs in this file. for example; https://web-spidy.com/install-django-windows/, web-spidy.com is the main domain, /install-django-windows is the URL pattern which we define in the urls.py file.

I hope you will understand the basic stature of Django which contains project folders and files, we defined the settings.py, urls.py, and manage.py files, and later on, we will understand the other files and we will create apps and create files according to our need. so keep in touch with us to subscribe to news and letters and also follow us on our social media accounts. If you have any questions regarding this post comment below, I am ready to give you an explanation. and keep practicing the previous lessons.

Create app in Django

apps represent the features of our project. Hopefully, you grasp the concept. For instance, if we aim to develop a social media platform containing the key features outlined below…