For this weekend assignment, keep working with your code buddies from this week. You are welcome to combine groups and join forces if you want to!

🎯 Project: Django Music

Build a CRUD application from scratch. This app should let you catalog your music collection.

This is due on Monday.

Django Music

🔖 Resources

• Database Design Tutorial This is a great short article that is really an intro to databases. It covers some data best practices and explains primary keys, foreign keys, and relationships.
• Django Docs Model Relationships
• Django Docs URLs
• Django Docs Template Language
• Django Docs Making Queries (using the ORM)

• Django Docs Topic Guide

• Model field null=True -> relevant for database storage
• Model field blank=True -> relevant for model object validation

Forms

• Working with Forms -> A good place to start for an overview
• What is up with form.is_valid()
• Validation on a model form
• Form and field validation
• The Forms API -> Details on form object attribute and methods (such as as_p())
• Django’s CSRF protection
  • What is CSRF?

🦉 Notes

• Diagram of Django
• Django Shell: How to create related objects
• Django Uptact Example

🗓️ Today’s Topics

Today we continue working on our mental model of Django, understanding what it does and how it does it.

• Django urls & views
• Django templates
• Django models and the database
• Dealing with errors

🎯 Project: Uptact

When you start your first dev job, you will see a lot of code all at once and will have to be able to read it and understand what it does so that you can modify and add to it.

In this project you will do just that: modify existing code to augment its functionality. This is due Friday morning.

Each person should accept the assignment invitation and work in their own repo, but please work on this assignment with your assigned buddies.

For each part of the assignment, talk over with your buddies how you each think you can accomplish the tasks. Be willing to try things your buddy suggests even if you aren’t sure it’s right! You will learn a lot by seeing what happens (and what doesn’t) when you make changes.

Talking it through will help clarify your understanding of how Django works.

code_buddies = [
  ('Lila', 'Trent'),
  ('Zack', 'Jeffrey'),
  ('James A.', 'James M.'),
  ('RJ', 'Keanya'),
  ('Jordyn', 'Janelle'),
  ('Jason', 'Jonathan', 'Trey'),
]

👉 Django Uptact

🔖 Resources

• MDN: Django Introduction
• Official Django documentation
• Django Girls Tutorial
• Django Topic Guide (this is a useful table of contents for the Django docs)
• Pretty Printed Django Videos: Videos 1-10 are the ones specific to Django. There are other videos on related topics; they are useful but not relevant to the material we’re covering right now.
• Django Chat Podcast: How to Learn Django
• MDN Django Docs -> See especially the Intro section
• Pipenv documentation
• Django Debug Toolbar

Databases

• DB Browser for SQLite
• Database Design Tutorial -> This is really an introduction to databases.

🦉 Code & Notes

• Notes - Tour of a Django App
• A diagram of Django’s structure
• Django Girls app with pipenv

📅 Today’s topics

• Review HTTP request-response
• Learn about MVC web applications
• Get to know Django!

🎯 Project

For our first Django app, we’ll use the excellent tutorial provided by the Django Girls organization. The assignment repo only contains a README file which you can delete. The tutorial will guide you through creating a Django project; create the project inside this repo.

Django Girls Tutorial

🔖 Resources

Django

• MDN: Django Introduction
• Official Django documentation
• Django Girls Tutorial
• Django Topic Guide (this is a useful table of contents for the Django docs)
• Pretty Printed Django Videos: Videos 1-10 are the ones specific to Django. There are other videos on related topics; they are useful but not relevant to the material we’re covering right now.
• Django Chat Podcast: How to Learn Django
• MDN Django Docs -> See especially the Intro section
• Pipenv documentation

HTTP

• How the web works
• An overview of HTTP

🦉 Code

• Notes - Tour of a Django App
• Notes - Diagram of Django’s structure
• Starting a new Django project

Today, we’ll take a brief survey of classes and objects in Python to get us ready to take on Django.

Today’s topics

• Python Classes
  • Instantiating an Object
  • Attributes
  • Instance Methods
  • “Magic” Methods

🔎 Mystery Word Project Retrospective

• Something I learned by doing this project is…
• Something I want to understand better or know more about is…
• In this project, I was happy that I was able to…

🐍 Code Break

Creating classes and objects

🎯 Project

Today you are taking the code you wrote for the word frequency project and refactoring it using OO programming.

Word Frequency OO

🔖 Resources

• Real Python - Object-Oriented Programming in Python 3
• A Byte of Python: OO
• Python Docs: Classes
• Inheritance and Composition in Python OO
• OO-Programming – This is a chapter from a book called Beyond the Basic Stuff With Python by Al Sweigart. He has written a ton of great books on Python and makes them available to read for free online at inventwithpython.com. You might check out Automate the Boring Stuff with Python. It’s a fantastic beginner book.
• Special Methods (aka magic methods) in the Python Docs
• A Guide to Python’s Magic Methods This is a great reference, but watch out! It was written for Python 2, so a few things may be different in Python 3.
• Scope of Variables in Python
• 🐛 Debugging Python For Fun & Profit (video)
• Code Style Checks in Python We installed flake8 on the first day of this phase. This post gives you some detail about what it’s for and why you need it.

🦉 Code

• Jupyter Notebooks Notebooks 14-15

Breaking down programming problems into their smallest pieces is one of the most critical skills in programming. You’ll need to practice this for the weekend assignment.

🗓️ Today’s topics

• Modules and import
• Program shape & design

🤓 How to approach a large project

Sketch it out before you write code

Developers need to sketch out their ideas. (This is the true purpose of whiteboards for engineering teams, not grilling job candidates on obscure algorithms…) A pencil and paper is a great tool for programming. If that isn’t your style, use a stylus and tablet, a Google Doc, or whatever you like to jot things down. Don’t start in the code editor, in other words.

• What is the program/product’s purpose or goal? Restate it in your own words to be sure you get it.
• What is its core purpose? See if you can clear away anything not strictly necessary and get down to the simplest version of what it does.
• Bullet list out the main things it needs to do to achieve its purpose.
• Then go back and look at each bullet, and break it down further. What steps might need to happen first?
  • Each step could be something you know how to do OR something you don’t know how to do. Examples:
    • Get the contents of a file
    • Figure out some way to choose a random word
    • Keep track of what letters have been guessed
• Go back and re-read your list. Are you missing any steps? Is there anything out of order? Could any step be made clearer or more precise with more detail? Revise this list until it looks solid to you.
• You will probably have to revisit your plan and revise it as you discover new problems to solve while you work. This is expected and ok. It is all in a day’s work for a software developer.

Once you have a plan you think is somewhat doable, then you can start writing code. Work through your steps in the order that makes sense, keeping in mind that you can hard-code values as placeholders where you need to.

You must run your program repeatedly to get feedback about what is happening.

Change one thing at a time and work methodically.

Take breaks.

Talk to other developers when you are stuck. Talking through the problem will often clarify what you need to do. See Rubber Duck Debugging.

Don’t forget to use your print statements to give you necessary information as your program runs.

🐍 Code Break

Try working with a module

🎯 Project

This is due on Monday morning.

Mystery Word

OPTIONAL Project

Don’t forget about the Python problem sets I mentioned in class. These are the same problems you solved on the first two days of JavaScript, to be implemented in Python syntax. Tests with pytest (like you used in Exercism) are included.

• Link to problem set 1 in Python
• Link to problem set 2 in Python

🔖 Resources

• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python
• RealPython: Modules and Packages: We’ll get more into packages next week, so just read through the section on modules for now.
• RealPython: How to Run Your Python Scripts: Much of the beginning of this article is review of things we’ve talked through in class, but it is a good synthesis of what we’ve covered.

🦉 Code

• Python notebooks 12 - Modules
• Amy’s solution to word frequency