WHY DJANGO WEB FRAMEWORK IS THE BEST?

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February 2022

In the software development lifecycle, choosing the appropriate tech stack for a project is very important.  There are many frameworks in the market but one shoe does not fit all. Because every framework aims to solve certain issues. However, many developers and leading companies normally choose the Django web framework for development.

But it is important to know why companies chose Django for website and mobile app development? What is the Django web framework? What can you do with Django? How has the Django platform evolved over time? What are the advantages of the Django framework as well as disadvantages? Read this article to get answers to all of your questions.

The History of Django Framework

Django was developed by two programmers who were working for a Kansas-based Lawrance Journal-World in 2005. The development of Django bears a very interesting story. The newspaper was in need of a website to create an online presence.  They fulfilled this need of the newspaper but also realized that they have developed a useful framework. Considering it a good framework, they made it publically available. As soon as it was made public, the framework developed its community and grew quickly.

What is Django Web Framework?

Django is a framework of Python which is open-source and designed for backend web applications. It is important to note that Python is one of the popular programming languages nowadays.

The framework follows a model-view-template or MVT architecture.  Django encourages the developers to focus exactly on the requirements. It makes it easy for the developers to focus on coding the app and not reinventing the whole design and minor details. It takes care of the background details on its own. This is because the primary and vital goal of Django is to make the development of a highly data-driven and complex website easy.

This is the reason that a number of well-known platforms are developed using Django. For example, Pinterest, Instagram, Dropbox, Mozilla, Disqus, Reddit, and Google are some of the many platforms that use the Django framework. This clearly supports the argument that the Django framework is highly scalable and meets the increasing demand of the user base. That’s why it is one of the efficient and quickest web application frameworks.

Importance of MVT Structure in Django Web Application

The structure of Django is clearly pythonic. Because it is completely written in pure Python. In the beginning, the MVT didn’t exist in the Django web application architecture and Django took off as the model-view-controller framework. However, the concept of the model view controller, MVC, still exists in Django programming.

The model view controller architecture is designed with a principle to provide the programmers with the feature of independence. Model, view, and controller are all three independent parts of an application. A programmer can make changes in the business logic and user interface of the application without affecting anything else.

The same is the concept of model-view-template architecture. However, programmers refer to Django architecture as MVT. There is no interdependence in the MVT architecture.  However, the layers of model-view-template architecture have some exclusive responsibilities.

Let’s discuss the responsibilities and work of each layer of the MVT.

Model

As per Django documentation, the model is a very important component of this architecture. Because it is the only unique source of information regarding your data. It subsumes all of the important fields and behaviors your data is containing.
However, other than interacting with a database, it also communicates with the View. The type of interaction of the model with the database depends upon the requirements of the view. It does update, insert and delete data as per requirements. Moreover, the model is simply a class of python. So, it does not have any knowledge about other layers of the MVT structure. Therefore, APIs are used to make communication between layers possible.

View

There are roughly four major responsibilities of the view. It processes the HTTP Get and Post requests made by the users and applies all the business and server-side logic. Then it gets data from a model based on the requests and then passes that data to the template for rendering purposes.

Template

Django has its own markup languages and many different tools. These template files were developed with HTML code. They are used to render the data to the user. However, the template can also communicate with the view and take data from the view to render.  It contains no business logic and has no connection with the database, it is only there to present data to the end-users.

What can you do with Django?

Django was developed to support a newspaper to create its online presence. So one can think that Django is good for platforms that have a lot of text. However, this is not the only application of Django – it has other diverse applications/ use cases as well. Other than that, the purpose of Django was to run and develop web applications easily and quickly.

Following are some of the possible usages of the Django framework:

    1. Content management systems (CMS)
    2. E-Commerce system
    3. B2B Client relationship management system (CRM) for handling communications in between.
    4. Email system
    5. Booking systems
    6. Verification systems
    7. REST/GraphQL based API server and so on.

One can hardly find anything that Django can not develop.

Why is Django Good for Development?

If you ask any professional or an expert programmer, you are going to get the same answer. We, as a recognized and leading tech service providing company, have identified some important features or advantages that make Django stand out in the market.

Comprehensive Documentation

Django has a very big community. Due to this, it has very comprehensive and easy documentation that can be referred to when and as needed. Moreover, It is filled with easy quick-start guides, tutorials, release notes, backward-compatible changes. In case of any problems, the documentation, and different Django-specific platforms can help.

Includes Batteries

Another big advantage of using Django is that developers do not have to code basic stuff anymore. The ecosystem of Django is very rich. It provides many third-party applications that can be integrated into Django applications. Importantly, you do not have to worry about these packages’ optimization and if they properly work or not. Because expert developers develop these packages and make them publicly accessible.

For example, almost every application – Django web and mobile applications require user authentication and verification. In the Django framework, you do not have to code this stuff but you can simply import these packages and set up things in seconds.

Similarly, these packages make the migration of databases easy. They can also handle URL routing along with dynamic URLs.

Admin Panel

Creating an admin panel is a very time taking and tedious process. Django helps the developers by providing a customizable admin panel interface. This admin panel interface can then be useful to perform basic CRUD operations without actually setting up the admin panel. This helps you to start your project quickly without programming the feature. In addition to this, the interface can be modified with the help of third-party wrappers.

Appropriate for SEO

Python is a very high-level programming language. This is the reason that programming in python is very easy, close to human language. It gives a great advantage to search engine optimizers to optimize the website and rank it on the search engine. It also helps in generating human-readable URLs and creating links using special keywords using SEO best practices.

Highly Secure

Over time, security has become one of the most significant features nowadays considering the intensity to which online attacks are increasing day by day. Because people have become more concerned about their privacy and security than ever before. Django provides a very secure environment to the developers and helps them avoid common security mistakes. 

Moreover, the developer does not have to code against the XSS, CSRF attacks, SQL injections, clickjacking, etc as Django provides built-in security against these. Django takes security very seriously, this is why it keeps on releasing new security patches from time to time.

Scalable and Reliable

As mentioned above, applications like Instagram and Reddit are using Django. This makes it quite evident that Django is one of the most scalable and reliable frameworks. For beginners, Django provides functionality to create applications and scale them as needed. And if the traffic increases, you can also handle more requests and data easily.

Large Community

Last but not least, another big advantage that makes Django the best web framework, is that it has a large community at its back. Since it is an open-source framework, there are plenty of volunteers who persistently work on the optimization and correctness of the framework. It currently has around 60.7k stars on GitHub and 25.9k GitHub forks. This has made web development with Django easier than it was in the past.

Drawbacks of Django Framework

There’s a popular saying in economics: “There is nothing like free lunch”. Which means everything has some cost. Everything comes up with some downsides. Similarly, there are some disadvantages of this python web framework as well – Django.

Not Suitable for Small-Scale Applications

Django is not a good choice if you’re planning to develop a small-scale application. Other top Python micro-frameworks support the development of such small-scale applications. For example, if you are planning to develop an application that supports a simple chat system with a few additional features, you can use the Flask web framework of python.

Does not Provide Default Support for WebSockets

If you have to update data in real-time, WebSockets are used. However, Django does not support real-time applications as of now. So, you may need to check other frameworks.

Strong Dependency on ORM

The provision of an ORM system by Django enables the developers to work with multiple databases and perform common database operations. However, the ORM system lacks some features related to robustness which are present in other ORM structures. Also, it also restricts the access of developers to SQLAlchemy.

Monolithic Nature

Some of the Django modules like ORM are very hard to replace. Their internal structures are very complex for the developers and it takes a lot of effort to replace or change the internal structure. However, Python has introduced different other frameworks as well to provide the developers with options.

Wrapping Up

Concluding the whole discussion it can be said with utmost clarity that Django is the best web framework. As has been mentioned above, even though the framework has some cons. Yet, the benefits and features of Django easily outclass all these issues which make it stand out in the market.

The model-view-template architecture of the Django framework, its scalability, and reliability make it the hot choice for the development community. And for beginners, its easy-to-do guide and cooperative large community make it more attractive.

It’s because of this quality of the framework that most of the websites used Django and well-known platforms like Google use this framework. High demand in technology makes the Django platform one of the highest-paid technologies.

If you’re planning to develop a professional and efficient web or mobile application with Django technology, don’t hesitate to ARFASOFTECH. Because we have dedicated teams to fulfill your demands.

Best Software House in Pakistan.
author

Fahad Ali, Author

Fahad is PM at ARFASOFTECH but has a knack for writing. He enjoys writing about the latest technologies and evolving trends. Most of his writings revolve around trending technologies and their integration into operations.

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