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Tutorial

Let’s build a basic blog with categories and tags! First, create a virtual environment:

# via builtin
$ python -m venv my_env
$ source my_env/bin/activate

# or via virtualenvwrapper
$ mkvirtualenv my_env

Now, create a postgresql database;

$ createdb my_project_dev

Now set your environment variables:

$ export DJANGO_SECRET=$(head -c 75 /dev/random | base64 | tr -dc 'a-zA-Z0-9' | head -c 50)
$ export DATABASE_URL="postgres://localhost:5432/my_project_dev"

Edit my_env/bin/activate or ~/.virtualenvs/my_env/bin/postactivate (according to your virtualenv creation procedure) and put these export variables in it. Will be handy next time you activate the environment. Now;

$ pip install django-vb-admin
$ cd /path/to/my-django-project
$ django-vb-admin startproject
# or
$ django-vb-admin startproject --target="/path/to/folder"

You’ll see:

Setup completed...
Now, create your virtual environment and run

    pip install -r requirements/development.pip

message. Now;

$ pip install -r requirements/development.pip
$ python manage.py migrate
Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, sessions
Running migrations:
  Applying contenttypes.0001_initial... OK
  Applying auth.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add... OK
  Applying admin.0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices... OK
  Applying contenttypes.0002_remove_content_type_name... OK
  Applying auth.0002_alter_permission_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0003_alter_user_email_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0004_alter_user_username_opts... OK
  Applying auth.0005_alter_user_last_login_null... OK
  Applying auth.0006_require_contenttypes_0002... OK
  Applying auth.0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages... OK
  Applying auth.0008_alter_user_username_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0010_alter_group_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0011_update_proxy_permissions... OK
  Applying sessions.0001_initial... OK

Now, we have a ready Django project. Let’s check;

$ python manage.py runserver_plus

# or

$ rake

INFO |  * Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
INFO |  * Restarting with stat
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).

Django version X.X.X, using settings 'config.settings.development'
Development server is running at http://[127.0.0.1]:8000/
Using the Werkzeug debugger (http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/)
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.
WARNING |  * Debugger is active!
WARNING |  * Debugger PIN disabled. DEBUGGER UNSECURED!

Blog Application

Let’s create a blog app!

$ python manage.py create_app blog

# or

$ rake new:application[blog]

"blog" application created.


    - Do not forget to add your `blog` to `INSTALLED_APPS` under `config/settings/base.py`:

    INSTALLED_APPS += [
        'django_extensions',
        'blog.apps.BlogConfig', # <-- add this
    ]

    - Do not forget to fix your `config/urls.py`:

    # ...
    # add your newly created app's urls here!
    urlpatterns += [
        # ...
        # this is just an example!
        path('__blog__/', include('blog.urls', namespace='blog')),
        # ..
    ]
    # ...

You can follow the instructions, fix your config/settings/base.py and config/urls.py as seen on the command output. Now run development server and call the url:

$ python manage.py runserver_plus

Open http://127.0.0.1:8000/__blog__/. Also, another builtin app is running; http://127.0.0.1:8000/__vb_baseapp__/. You can remove __vb_baseapp__ config from config/urls.py.

Now let’s add some models. We have 3 choices as parameters:

1. django: Uses Django’s models.Model
2. basemodel: Uses CustomBaseModel (which inherits from models.Model)
3. softdelete: Uses CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete

We’ll use soft-deletable model to demonstrate soft-delete features. Let’s create Post, Category and Tag models:

$ python manage.py create_model blog post softdelete

# or

$ rake new:model[blog,post,softdelete]

models/post.py created.
admin/post.py created.
post model added to models/__init__.py
post model added to admin/__init__.py


    `post` related files created successfully:

    - `blog/models/post.py`
    - `blog/admin/post.py`

    Please check your models before running `makemigrations` ok?

$ python manage.py create_model blog category softdelete

# or

$ rake new:model[blog,category,softdelete]

models/category.py created.
admin/category.py created.
category model added to models/__init__.py
category model added to admin/__init__.py


    `category` related files created successfully:

    - `blog/models/category.py`
    - `blog/admin/category.py`

    Please check your models before running `makemigrations` ok?

$ python manage.py create_model blog tag softdelete

# or

$ rake new:model[blog,tag,softdelete]

models/tag.py created.
admin/tag.py created.
tag model added to models/__init__.py
tag model added to admin/__init__.py


    `tag` related files created successfully:

    - `blog/models/tag.py`
    - `blog/admin/tag.py`

    Please check your models before running `makemigrations` ok?

Let’s fix models before creating and executing migrations:

# blog/models/post.py

import logging

from django.conf import settings
from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

from console import console
from vb_baseapp.models import CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete

__all__ = ['Post']

logger = logging.getLogger('app')
console = console(source=__name__)


class Post(CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete):
    author = models.ForeignKey(
        to=settings.AUTH_USER_MODEL, on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='posts', verbose_name=_('author')
    )
    category = models.ForeignKey(
        to='Category', on_delete=models.CASCADE, related_name='posts', verbose_name=_('category')
    )
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255, verbose_name=_('title'))
    body = models.TextField(verbose_name=_('body'))
    tags = models.ManyToManyField(to='Tag', related_name='posts', blank=True)

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'blog'
        verbose_name = _('post')
        verbose_name_plural = _('posts')  # check pluralization

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

and Category model:

# blog/models/category.py

import logging

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

from console import console
from vb_baseapp.models import CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete

__all__ = ['Category']

logger = logging.getLogger('app')
console = console(source=__name__)


class Category(CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=255, verbose_name=_('title'))

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'blog'
        verbose_name = _('category')
        verbose_name_plural = _('categories')  # check pluralization

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title

and Tag model:

# blog/models/tag.py

import logging

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import ugettext_lazy as _

from console import console
from vb_baseapp.models import CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete

__all__ = ['Tag']

logger = logging.getLogger('app')
console = console(source=__name__)


class Tag(CustomBaseModelWithSoftDelete):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=255, verbose_name=_('name'))

    class Meta:
        app_label = 'blog'

    def __str__(self):
        return self.name

Let’s create and run migration file:

$ python manage.py makemigrations --name create_post_category_and_tag

# or

$ rake db:update[blog,create_post_category_and_tag]

Migrations for 'blog':
  applications/blog/migrations/0001_create_post_category_and_tag.py
    - Create model Category
    - Create model Tag
    - Create model Post

$ python manage.py migrate

# or

$ rake db:migrate

Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, blog, contenttypes, sessions
Running migrations:
  Applying blog.0001_create_post_category_and_tag... OK

Now we have a model which has relations to other models via ForeignKey and ManyToMany level. Let’s tweak blog/admin/post.py:

# blog/admin/post.py

import logging

from django.contrib import admin

from console import console
from vb_baseapp.admin import (
    CustomBaseModelAdminWithSoftDelete,
)

from ..models import Post

__all__ = ['PostAdmin']

logger = logging.getLogger('app')
console = console(source=__name__)


@admin.register(Post)
class PostAdmin(CustomBaseModelAdminWithSoftDelete):
    list_filter = ('category', 'tags', 'author')
    list_display = ('__str__', 'author')
    ordering = ('title',)
    # hide_deleted_at = False

Let’s create a super user and jump in to admin pages. AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS is removed from development settings, you can type any password :)

$ python manage.py createsuperuser --username="${USER}" --email="your@email.com"
$ python manage.py runserver_plus

# or

$ rake

INFO |  * Running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/ (Press CTRL+C to quit)
INFO |  * Restarting with stat
Performing system checks...

System check identified no issues (0 silenced).

Django version X.X.X, using settings 'config.settings.development'
Development server is running at http://[127.0.0.1]:8000/
Using the Werkzeug debugger (http://werkzeug.pocoo.org/)
Quit the server with CONTROL-C.
WARNING |  * Debugger is active!
WARNING |  * Debugger PIN disabled. DEBUGGER UNSECURED!
INFO | GET | 302 | /admin/
INFO | GET | 200 | /admin/login/?next=/admin/
INFO | GET | 404 | /favicon.ico
:
:

Now open http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/ and add a new blog post! Create different categories and tags. Then open http://127.0.0.1:8000/admin/blog/category/ page.

In the Action menu, you’ll have couple extra options:

• Delete selected categories
• Recover selected categories (Appears if you are filtering inactive records)
• Hard delete selected categories

Now, delete one or more categories or tags. Check activity state filter for post, category and tag models. You can recover deleted items from the action menu too.