Django 5 By Example - Fifth Edition: Build powerful and reliable Python web applications from scratch

2025 EDITION: Build four fully functional real-world Django applications with authentication, content management systems, payment processing, REST APIs, and more!

Free with your book: DRM-free PDF version + access to Packt's next-gen Reader*

Key Features

• Updated with the latest Django 5.2 features, detailed app planning, improved tooling, and GPT prompts for extending projects
• Learn Django essentials, including models, ORM, views, templates, URLs, forms, authentication, signals, and middleware
• Integrate JavaScript, PostgreSQL, Redis, Celery, Docker, and Memcached into your applications

Book Description

If you want to learn Django by doing, this book is for you.

This 2025 EDITION, fully updated to Django 5.2 LTS, is the fifth edition of the best-selling Django By Example franchise that helps you build real-world web apps. This book will walk you through planning and creation, solving common problems, and implementing best practices using a step-by-step approach.

You’ll cover a wide range of web application development topics through four different projects: a blog application, a social website, an e-commerce application, and an e-learning platform. Pick up what’s new in Django 5 as you build end-to-end Python web apps, follow detailed project plans, and understand the hows and whys of Django.

This is a practical and approachable book that will have you creating web apps quickly.

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What you will learn

• Use various Django modules to solve specific problems using the latest features
• Integrate third-party Django applications into your project
• Build complex web applications using Redis, Postgres, Celery/RabbitMQ and Memcached
• Set up a production environment for your project with Docker Compose
• Build a RESTful API with Django Rest Framework (DRF)
• Implement advanced functionalities, such as full-text search engines, user activity streams, payment gateways, and recommender engines
• Build real-time asynchronous (ASGI) apps with Django Channels and WebSockets

Who this book is for

This book is for readers with basic Python programming knowledge and programmers transitioning from other web frameworks who wish to learn Django by doing. If you already use Django, or have in the past, and want to learn best practices and integrate other technologies to scale your applications, then this book is for you too. This book will help you master the most relevant areas of the framework by building practical projects from scratch.

Some previous knowledge of HTML and JavaScript is assumed.

Table of Contents

1. Building a Blog Application
2. Enhancing Your Blog and Adding Social Features
3. Extending Your Blog Application
4. Building a Social Website
5. Implementing Social Authentication
6. Sharing Content on Your Website
7. Tracking User Actions
8. Building an Online Shop
9. Managing Payments and Orders
10. Extending Your Shop
11. Adding Internationalization to Your Shop
12. Building an E-Learning Platform
13. Creating a Content Management System
14. Rendering and Caching Content
15. Building an API
16. Building a Chat Server
17. Going Live

Antonio Melé has been crafting Django projects since 2006, for clients spanning multiple industries. He is Engineering Director at Backbase, a leading global fintech firm dedicated to facilitating the digital transformation of financial institutions. He co-founded Nucoro, a digital wealth management platform. In 2009 Antonio founded Zenx IT, a company specialized in developing digital products. He has been working as CTO and consultant for several tech-centric startups. He has also managed development teams building projects for large enterprise clients. He has an MSc in Computer Science from Universidad Pontificia Comillas and completed the Advanced Management Program at MIT Sloan. His father inspired his passion for computers and coding.