Django Rest Framework

Prerequisites

• Python=>3.10

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Steps/Commands

Note: Python virtual env docs can be found here.

1. Virtual Environment - Open a terminal and use the following command to create a virtual environment.

python -m venv venv

Now activate the virtual environment with the following command.

# windows machine
venv\Scripts\activate.bat

#mac/linux
source venv/bin/activate

You will know your virtual environment is active when your terminal displays the following:

(venv) path\to\project\drf_course>

2. Packages and requirements - Our project will rely on a whole bunch of 3rd party packages (requirements) to function. We will be using a Python package manager to install packages throughout this course. I have already created a requirements.txt file. Check out /backend/requirements.txt

asgiref==3.5.2
Django==4.1.3
django-extensions==3.2.1
django-filter==22.1
djangorestframework==3.14.0
djangorestframework-jsonapi==6.0.0
inflection==0.5.1
python-dotenv==0.21.0
pytz==2022.6
sqlparse==0.4.3
tzdata==2022.6

Let's go ahead and install our project requirements. Add the following code to your terminal.

pip install -r backend/requirements.txt

3. Django - You can now go ahead and start a new Django project. Installing Django has given you access to a handy 'startproject' command. Use the following command to start our new project.

django-admin startproject drf_course backend

4. Secrets and Environment Variables - It is good practice to separate sensitive information from your project. We have installed a package called 'python-dotenv' that helps us manage secrets easily. Lets go ahead and create a env file to store information that is specific to our working environment. Use the following command in your terminal.

# windows machine
copy env.template .env

#mac/linux
cp env.template .env

You can use your new .env file to store API keys, secret_keys, app_passwords and you will gain access to these in the Django app.

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