This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
This chapter is from the book
Installing an Application
After you have configured and synchronized the database, you can begin installing applications in it. Installing applications is simply a matter of creating an application directory, defining a model, and then activating the application so that Django can access it in the database.
Creating a Model
After the application has been created, you need to create a model for the data that will be stored in the application. A model is simply a definition of the classes, attributes, and relationships of objects in the application.
To create a model, you need to modify the models.py file located in the application directory. The models.py file is a Python script that is used to define the tables that will be added to the database to store objects in the model.
The models.py file initially has only one line, which imports the models object from the django.db package. To define the model, you need to define one or more classes. Each class represents an object type in the database.
Try It Yourself: Activate the Person Model
This section takes you through the process of activating the Person model by adding it to the INSTALLED_APPS setting in the settings.py file and then synchronizing the database.
- Open the iFriends\settings.py file in an editor.
- Find the INSTALLED_APPS setting, and add the iFriends.People application to it, as shown in the following snippet:
INSTALLED_APPS = ( 'django.contrib.auth', 'django.contrib.contenttypes', 'django.contrib.sessions', 'django.contrib.sites', 'iFriends.People', ) - Save the file.
- Synchronize the People application into the iFriends database by using the following command from the root of the iFriends project, as shown in Figure 2.4:
python manage.py syncdb
Figure 2.4 Synchronizing the new People application with the database from a command line.
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The syncdb command creates the necessary tables in the iFriends database for the People application. The model is now active, and data can be added to and retrieved from the database using Django at this point.