SQLite with Django Tutorial 📝

Welcome to our SQLite with Django tutorial! This lesson will guide you through using SQLite as Django's default database and create a simple web application. Let's get started!

Introduction 🎯

In this tutorial, we will explore how to use SQLite as the database for a Django project. Django is a high-level Python web framework that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. SQLite is a lightweight, file-based database that doesn't require a separate server.

Prerequisites 📝

Basic knowledge of Python
Familiarity with the command line or terminal
Installed Python 3 and pip
Installed Django (pip install django)

Creating a Django Project ✅

Before we dive into SQLite, let's create a new Django project:

bash

django-admin startproject my_django_project

Navigate to the project directory:

bash

cd my_django_project

Now, let's create a new app:

bash

python manage.py startapp my_app

Configuring SQLite 📝

By default, Django uses SQLite3 as the database. To confirm, open the settings.py file in the my_django_project directory and look for the DATABASES section:

python

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': 'db.sqlite3',
    }
}

Creating Models 📝

Models in Django define the structure of the database tables. In our example, we will create a simple model for a Book:

python

# my_app/models.py
from django.db import models

class Book(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    author = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    publication_year = models.IntegerField()

Migrating the Database 📝

After defining the model, we need to create the corresponding database table. Django accomplishes this using migrations:

bash

python manage.py makemigrations my_app
python manage.py migrate

Creating a View 📝

A view in Django is responsible for rendering a template based on the data fetched from the database. Let's create a simple view to display our books:

python

# my_app/views.py
from django.shortcuts import render
from my_app.models import Book

def book_list(request):
    books = Book.objects.all()
    return render(request, 'book_list.html', {'books': books})

Creating a Template 📝

Finally, let's create a template that will display our books:

html

<!-- my_app/templates/book_list.html -->
{% load static %}
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
<head>
    <meta charset="UTF-8">
    <title>Book List</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Book List</h1>
    <ul>
    {% for book in books %}
        <li>{{ book.title }} by {{ book.author }} ({{ book.publication_year }})</li>
    {% empty %}
        <li>No books found.</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
</body>
</html>

Now, when you run the server (python manage.py runserver), you should see your book list displayed in the browser. 🎉

Quiz 💡

That's it for this lesson! In the next tutorial, we'll learn about working with Django forms and CRUD operations. Stay tuned! 🎯