Setting Up Django and Installing Required Packages

Project setup

You aren’t required to install anything to run Django projects on the Educative platform. Instead, a project with all the needed packages is ready and set up for you so that you can focus on the lessons. You just click the “Run” button, and it will run on your browser. However, if there is an error and the project stops running, you’ll have to run it using the manual terminal commands.

For this reason, you might want to know how to set up the project locally on your machine while working on your project. Here is how to do that.

Step 1. Creating a project directory

The first step is to create a directory where your Django project will reside. In your terminal, type this command to create a directory named minicourse:

mkdir minicourse

Then enter the directory:

cd minicourse

Step 2. Creating and activating the virtual environment

A virtual environment acts like a workspace and is where all the required dependencies for a specific Python project are stored to prevent dependencies conflicting with other Python projects. To create it, type this command in the terminal:

python -m venv .venv

The command above creates a venv virtual environment with the name .venv, making the directory a hidden one. Now, we can activate it.

Windows command:

.venv\Scripts\activate.bat

Linux command:

source .venv/bin/activate

Step 3. Installing required packages

You will need to install the following packages:

• django: The Django framework.

• djangorestframework: Enables us to create REST APIs in Django.

• djangorestframework-simplejwt: Provides the JWT authentication backend that can be used in Django REST.

pip install django djangorestframework djangorestframework-simplejwt

Step 4. Creating the Django project and app

Now, let’s create the project:

django-admin startproject demo

Then, change the directory to the project level:

cd demo

Now, create the app:

python manage.py startapp main

Step 5. Configuring the settings

Now, register your app main and add djangorestframework in the settings file under INSTALLED_APPS.