Thursday, January 31, 2013

Of Virtual Constructs and Buildings: Django Web Application Framework



In a world of dozens of options, making things for the web can be quite a maze of work. Factors are many, with no clear hierarchy of priority between many of the factors. Systems presently offer a variety of priorities in terms of what kind of design they side towards, and it often becomes a question of what takes priority. Django presents itself as one of the possible solutions for building things for the web. This application framework uses Python as the programming language, making use of the Python flexibility and libraries to provide the building blocks for using Django as a web application framework.

Django provides an easy to use data-model syntax based on the MVC or Model-View-Controller architecture, allowing creation of one set of constructs for data, which can viewed in various different formations and controlled through a separate independent styled interface. This form of management allows for easy customization at almost every level of developing a web application, including what is stored, how people can see it, and how people can change it. With Python, and already developed API is available for accessing data and providing lots to work with. Python's use of regular expressions also assists in designing the URL structure for any web service developed, creating easy to manage structures for creating organized sites. With the ability to easily create and manage these options, Django helps to avoid the repetition that occurs when creating websites and applications with similar pages and framework.

While I personally have never had extensive exposure to other forms of web application framework, Django presents a very clean and easy to modify system to producing web interfaces with its vast array of templates and easy of customization. The diversity of the Python language as the language of the framework provides a good contrast to structure for those who do not have extensive practice in HTML and Python, preventing potential confusion over what elements are defined for the user's presentation (the HTML side) and the behind the scenes operations (the Django side). This contrasts from Wicket, which in my early exposure to it, proved to be a little disorienting having the same style of programming for both sides of the work. While this certainly isn't going to apply to everyone, the distinction between the "front" and "back" of a framework can be helpful in overall control over development. It's quicker form of code generation through Python over Java used in Python also feels smoother for rapid adjustments.

Django proves to be a good technology for building up a site. The ability to cache pages that could be frequently used and the ability to easy build feeds for RSS or Atom syndication provide support for larger or more popular projects. While my experience with different web application frameworks may be limited, the concepts and ease of use of the Django system shows great potential for building projects for a variety of purposes.

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