After reading Two Scoops of Django, I decided to explore the cookiecutter app that they recommend. If you haven’t used it, cookiecutter is ” A command-line utility that creates projects from cookiecutters (project templates). E.g. Python package projects, jQuery plugin projects.”
In particular I explored some of the Django-specific cookiecutter templates (though I did peek at a few other languages, too). I started with the cookiecutter-django template as it was written by one of the authors of the book and it was at the top of the list I was looking at.
Cookiecutter-Django
Cookiecutter-Django is a full-on professional level template for producing enterprise-level Django apps. As such, it comes with a LOT of bells and whistles. Celery support? Yep. Docker? Yep. Custom windows and pycharm setups? Yep. The list goes on. This is pretty cool, but, at 134 files, many of which I do not know the use of, this is clearly not aimed at me, the hobbyist learning Django in his spare time.
It does, however, have some interesting project layout ideas that I think ARE useful and sound. Among these are having separate doc and requirements directories and having the requirements files broken into separate environments (local, production, test) to codify and simplify the set up for the job you’re doing.
Lots of good stuff here to dig into in the future, but this is a bit over my head at the moment. Fortunately, there are a myriad of other templates to play with. I found a good list of them at readthedocs.
Django-crud
The next one I ventured into was django-crud. This is different from the others I looked at in that it was not a full django project, rather just the webapp portion of it.
It is pretty cool in that it gives a really detailed example of how to write a simple model (performing the CRUD database operations, of course) with full unit tests and simple templates. At 16 files, it’s not so overwhelming and has a pretty clear intent. I’m sure the author uses it as a starting point for webapps, but I’m finding it as useful learning tool and will likely be the basis as I start down the unit testing road (coming soon!).
Django-paas
I also took a quick tour through Django-paas. which is billed as a “Django template ready to use in SAAS platforms like Heroku, OpenShift, etc..”.
While this isn’t likely one I’m ready to use just yet (I’m still hosting locally on my private machine for use inside my network). It’s definitely got a few features that are worth looking at. Of note was the use of waitress (instead of gnuicorn) which might be an interesting alternative. It also provided a procfile for heroku, which I can see being handy in the future.
Simple Django
My final stop of this tour was Simple-Django. This is a very trimmed down version of the full cookiecutter-django template I started with. It still has separate requirements and docs directories, but does not pull in nearly the number of third-party packages that its full-blown antecedent does.
This looks like a good start place for my level of development and interest. It will likely be the basis I use if and when I create a django template for my own use.
Summary
While none of these cookie-cutter templates are exactly what I’m looking for at the moment, I found exploring them a good way to learn about different tools, directory layouts and general best practices in the django world. I’d encourage you to explore some of these, even if they’re not something you need at the moment.
I’d like to thank the authors of each of these templates for the work they put into them and for sharing them with us, and, in particular, Audrey Roy Greenfeld and Danny Roy Greenfeld for creating cookiecutter and the cookiecutter-django template.
Thanks!