Django Blog - Complete Learning Journey

A comprehensive Django blog application built from scratch, documenting the complete learning journey from basic setup to advanced features like user authentication, authorization, and file uploads.

📚 Project Overview

This repository contains a fully functional blog application built with Django, featuring user authentication, post creation with image uploads, and a complete admin interface. The project serves as a practical learning resource for Django fundamentals.

✨ Features

• User Management

  • User registration with automatic login
  • Login/logout functionality
  • Session management
  • Password validation and security

• Blog Posts

  • Create, read, and display blog posts
  • Rich text content with titles and body
  • SEO-friendly slugs for URLs
  • Image banner uploads
  • Author attribution
  • Automatic date/time tracking

• Authorization & Security

  • Login-required decorators for protected views
  • CSRF protection on all forms
  • Conditional navigation based on authentication
  • Secure file upload handling

• Admin Interface

  • Django admin for content management
  • Model registration
  • Easy post creation and editing

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Framework: Django 5.2
• Database: SQLite (development)
• Python: 3.12+
• Image Processing: Pillow
• Frontend: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript (vanilla)

📁 Project Structure

myproject/
├── myproject/              # Project configuration
│   ├── settings.py        # Main settings
│   ├── urls.py            # Root URL configuration
│   └── views.py           # Project-level views
├── posts/                 # Blog posts app
│   ├── migrations/        # Database migrations
│   ├── templates/         # App templates
│   ├── admin.py          # Admin configuration
│   ├── forms.py          # Custom forms
│   ├── models.py         # Post model
│   ├── urls.py           # App URL patterns
│   └── views.py          # Post views
├── users/                # User authentication app
│   ├── templates/        # User templates
│   ├── urls.py          # Auth URL patterns
│   └── views.py         # Auth views
├── templates/            # Project-level templates
│   ├── layout.html      # Base template
│   ├── home.html
│   └── about.html
├── static/              # Static files
│   ├── css/
│   └── js/
├── media/               # User uploads
├── db.sqlite3          # Database
└── manage.py           # Django CLI

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

• Python 3.12 or higher
• pip (Python package manager)
• Virtual environment (recommended)

Installation

1. Clone the repository

   git clone https://github.com/yourusername/django-blog.git
   cd django-blog

2. Create and activate virtual environment

   # On macOS/Linux
   python -m venv env_site
   source env_site/bin/activate
   
   # On Windows
   python -m venv env_site
   env_site\Scripts\activate

3. Install dependencies

   pip install django pillow

4. Apply migrations

   cd myproject
   python manage.py migrate

5. Create superuser

   python manage.py createsuperuser

6. Run development server

   python manage.py runserver

7. Access the application

   • Main site: http://127.0.0.1:8000/
   • Admin interface: http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/
   • Posts: http://127.0.0.1:8000/posts/

📖 Learning Path

This project was built through a structured 12-lesson learning journey:

1. Lesson 1-2: Project setup, apps, and templates
2. Lesson 3: Models and migrations
3. Lesson 4: Django ORM basics
4. Lesson 5: Django admin interface
5. Lesson 6: URLs, slugs, and page routing
6. Lesson 7: Image uploads and media files
7. Lesson 8: Creating the users app (Challenge)
8. Lesson 9: User registration forms
9. Lesson 10: User authentication and login
10. Lesson 11: Authorization and access control
11. Lesson 12: Custom forms and post creation

Detailed lesson notes are available in the lesson*.md files.

🔑 Key Concepts Covered

Models & Database

• Model field types and parameters
• ForeignKey relationships
• Database migrations workflow
• Django ORM queries

Views & URLs

• Function-based views
• URL routing and namespacing
• Path converters
• Request/response handling

Templates

• Template inheritance
• Template tags and filters
• Static files integration
• Conditional rendering

Forms

• ModelForm creation
• Form validation
• File upload handling
• CSRF protection

Authentication

• User registration
• Login/logout functionality
• Session management
• Login-required decorators

Authorization

• Access control with decorators
• Conditional navigation
• User permissions
• "Next" parameter handling

📝 Usage Examples

Creating a New Post

1. Log in to the application
2. Click the "New Post" link (🆕)
3. Fill in the form:
   • Title
   • Body content
   • Slug (URL-friendly)
   • Banner image (optional)
4. Submit the form

User Registration

1. Navigate to registration page (🚀)
2. Enter username and password
3. Confirm password
4. Automatic login after successful registration

Admin Management

1. Access /admin/
2. Log in with superuser credentials
3. Manage posts, users, and other content

🔒 Security Features

• CSRF protection on all forms
• Password hashing and validation
• Login-required decorators for protected views
• Secure session management
• File upload validation
• SQL injection protection (Django ORM)

🎨 Customization

Adding New Fields to Post Model

# posts/models.py
class Post(models.Model):
    # ... existing fields
    excerpt = models.TextField(max_length=200, blank=True)
    
    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

Then run:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Customizing Templates

Edit templates in templates/ or app/templates/ directories. The base template layout.html controls the overall site structure.

📚 Additional Resources

• Django Documentation
• Django Tutorial
• Django Best Practices

🤝 Contributing

This is a learning project, but suggestions and improvements are welcome! Feel free to:

1. Fork the repository
2. Create a feature branch
3. Commit your changes
4. Push to the branch
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

This project is open source and available under the MIT License.

👤 Author

Ankit Talukder

• GitHub: @ankit2061

🙏 Acknowledgments

• Django Software Foundation
• https://youtu.be/Rp5vd34d-z4?si=Nu7dJxKsEoQ0MsL8
• Python community
• All contributors to Django documentation

📞 Support

If you have questions or need help:

1. Check the lesson notes (lesson*.md files)
2. Review Django documentation
3. Open an issue on GitHub

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Note: This is a learning project for educational purposes. For production deployment, additional security measures and configurations are recommended.