Python Django - The Practical Guide

Python Django - The Practical Guide

Why did it take this course?

The main reason why I took this course is that we use Django for almost every project in the company I work for.

And to be honest, it took me some time to truly like python, not because it was difficult or anything like that, but because it did not attract me right away as javascript did, so in the beginning, I just learned the basics to get the work done and I move on.

And even though Django is easy to understand and it does not have a huge learning curve feeling 100% comfortable with it, it takes some good time of learning and practicing.

So, at some point, I felt like I knew my way around Django but at the same time, I felt I did not know anything about it.

Because I basically how knew how to do the things I need but I did not know or understand completely how things work.

It was like knowing it because I memorized how to do things, but not because I understood them. The worst part of this situation was the fact that it was hard to troubleshoot problems because I did not understand where those problems or bugs were coming from.

So, I realize that the best thing was to learn Django from zero and step by step.

Once again, I went to udemy, search for Django courses and I found a bunch of them, but I ended up taking the one from Maximilian Schwarzmüller called Python Django - The Practical Guide.

I knew Maximilian Schwarzmüller, from his youtube channel because he is a very well-known Udemy instructor with more than 30 courses and almost 2 million enrolled in at least one of his courses.

That is why I knew that eventually, I was going to take one of his courses. Currently, I had taken 4 of his courses and without a doubt, this is my favorite.

You can visit his udemy profile here, where you can read more about Maximilian, take a look at his courses, and find all the links for his social media accounts and website.

About the course

From lesson one, you understand why Maximilian has so many students, and all his courses have such good reviews.

The structures of the lessons and the course itself are very well planned. Every section starts with introductions and finishes with a summary, which makes it a great way to wrap up what you have been learning in that section and make it easy to reference it in the future if you need to revisit some topics.

This course does not assume you know about Django, because it starts from zero but you must have a good wrap of how python work.

The course has 255 lectures, it is almost 23 hours long and it is divided into 17 sections which are:

• Getting Started
• Course Setup
• URLs & Views
• Templates and Static Files
• Course Project: Building a Blog - Basic
• Data & Models
• Admin
• Course Project: Building a Blog - Data & Models
• Forms
• Class Views
• File Uploads
• Sessions
• Course Project: Building a Blog - Forms, Files & Sessions
• Deployment
• Optional: Django Summary & Quick Introduction
• Bonus

As you can see it covers everything you need to know to get started and more.

The Basics

The course started with the most basic Django concept, which are URL, Views, templates, and, static.

Maxmilian makes a nice effort so all this basics concepts are clearly understood because they are surely the fundamentals of this framework.

Going in deep

After this, you will start learning more specific Django features like Data & Models, Sessions, and class Views which are all the things that make Django what it is A full-stack framework.

The key features

Even though you can build a great application only by knowing the topics I just mentioned there are a few things that completed a website and those are, forms and file uploads.
Especially form, because most websites these days work with users' inputs, and Django makes it easy to get data from forms and store it on a database to later use it on the frontend if needed.

The project

After the first few sections, we start working on what is going to be the main project of this course, a Django Blog.
When I started learning Django I did not like the fact that everyone is teaching how to create a blog, later I understood that a blog is a simple way to learn most of the things that Django has to offer and if you can create a Django blog then you will be able to build any other application you want.
So, during the entire course, you will be learning each important thing of Django and later applying that knowledge in the course project. Which I believe is always a great way to finish understanding and cementing all those new concepts.

What you will learn

This is what you will learn during the course:

• Installing Django
• Creating and understanding Django projects
• Understanding URLs, views, requests, and responses
• Working with templates and static files like CSS and images
• Working with data and models
• Connecting data with relationships (one-to-many, one-to-one, many-to-many)
• Querying data with Django's powerful model solution
• Adding administration panels to your projects
• Handling user input with forms - manually and with Django's built-in form support
• Advanced features like class-based views (and when to use them)
• Dealing with file uploads and how to serve uploaded files
• Working with sessions
• In-depth deployment instructions and examples
• Different ways of deploying and serving static files and user uploads

Prerequisite

• Basic Python and web development knowledge (HTML/ CSS) is required
• NO prior Django experience is required at all

My thought about this course

A big yes, if you want to learn about Django. This course will teach you everything you need to know to create your first Django project and the most important bits about Django.

Because, before I took this course, I could build things with Django but I could not understand very well how most of the things worked, but at the end of the course all those doubts were no longer there.

It gave me a really clear idea of how Django works and what is the purpose of each part of this framework.

I still don't know how my things about Django, but now I know if I ever get stuck in a problem I can identify where it is failing and because of that it is easier to look for a solution.

Again, if you are looking to learn Django, this is the course you are looking for.

If you want to take a look at this course in Udemy, click the next link Python Django The Practical Guide

Thanks for reading the article!

I hope you enjoyed this review and if you happen to know another course about Django, please share it in the comments.