Dive into Django

• Creating a project
• Understanding the Django project structure
• A bit of Django internals — overview of the Django source

Deploying Django

• Packaging Django Applications
• Introduction to python packaging
• pip and distribute
• pip requirements
• Scaling Django Applications
• Separating out the DB server
• Separating out the media server
• Load Balancing and Redundancy
• Django setup via virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper

Working with Models and Databases (Concept)

• Datastore design considerations
• Relational v/s NoSQL stores
• Understanding database abstraction layers (DAL)
• Entities, Relationships
• Tables, Fields, Keys, Indexes
• Object Relational Mapping (ORM) and ORM issues

Django Model Basics

• Creating models
• Fields, Field types and Field Options
• Handling relationships - OneToOne, OneToMany, ManyToOne
• Object CRUD
• Creating objects
• Retrieving objects
• Filters when retrieving objects
• Comparing objects
• Updating objects
• Deleting objects

Advanced Model Handling

• Model Inheritance
• Aggregation
• Joins and Aggregates
• filter() and exclude()
• order_by()
• values()
• Managers
• Working with NoSQL stores
• Performing raw SQL queries
• Transactions
• Working with multiple databases

Handling Migrations

• Issues with db migration
• South — the de-facto Django migration utility
• Migrating forward(up)
• Migrating back (down)
• Resolving conflicts during migration

Working with Controllers, Views and Templates (Concept)

• Data formats
• XML and JSON
• MVC v/s MVP v/s MTV
• Thin clients v/s Thick clients
• Serializing and De-serializing of objects
• Conversion between Python objects and JavaScript objects
• Need for templates
• Anti-patterns in MVC design

Forms Framework

• Widget, Field, Form and Form Media
• Tying form objects with Views
• Custom Validation Rules
• Customizing the look and feel
• Creating forms from models

Template Engine

• Using the template system
• Template, Context, Variables, Template Tags and Filters
• HTML escaping
• Using templates in views
• Template Inheritance
• Template Loaders

Extending the Template System

• Creating a template library
• Writing custom template filters
• Writing custom template tags
• Writing custom template loaders

Middleware

• Session handling
• Enabling sessions
• Configuring session engine
• Using sessions in views

Request and Response Objects

• HttpRequest object
• UploadedFile object
• QueryDict object
• HttpResponse object

Admin site

• Activating the admin site
• Customizing the admin form
• Adding related objects

Authentication

• Authentication Overview: Users, Permissions and Groups
• User Management
• How passwords are stored
• Using authentication in web requests — login, logout and password changes

Logging

• Loggers, Handlers, Filters and Formatters
• Using logging in code
• Configuring logging via settings.py
• Installing and testing Sentry via Raven
• Using Sentry in Django Applications
• Configuring Sentry

Caching

• Setting up the cache
• Various caching backends available
• Cache configuration
• Per-Site Cache
• Per-View Cache
• Caching Template Fragments
• Caching specific objects using low-level Cache API
• Handling issues with upstream caches
• Using Vary Headers

Search Plugins

• Haystack
• Installation of Haystack and other dependencies
• Setting up the fields to be searched
• Setting up the search form
• Building indexes
• Updating indexes
• Sphinx
• Setting up Sphinx search
• Testing the setup
• Using Sphinx via Django
• Comparison of the Haystack based backends and Sphinx backend

Media Storage

• Managing media files
• Default file storage
• Custom storage systems
• Django storages plugin

Handling models RESTfully

• REST principles and HTTP
• Introduction to Tastypie plugin
• Resources and ModelResources — the “R†of REST
• Working with Django Models
• Working with non-models
• Working with differences from backend models — The hydrate/dehydrate cycle

Testing

• Unit testing using the builtin django test framework
• Use of fixtures
• Testing models
• Testing views
• Advantages of nose
• Use of django-nose for testing

Other Important Plugins

• Asynchronous task processing — the need
• Asynchronous task processing in Django using Celery, Kombu and a MQ backend
• Using django-extensions
• Using the contrib packages

Client Side

• Introductory JavaScript
• Working with the Browser DOM
• Handling events
• Asynchronous requests and XMLHTTP
• Frontend performance considerations
• Using AJAX in Django - JSONResponse instead of HTTPResponse