Shohanur Shoron Django Skills Django Dev

Django Development Skill

This skill covers professional Django development across two major paradigms:

1. MVT — Django's built-in template engine, HTML + Tailwind CSS + vanilla JS
2. DRF — Django REST Framework for building APIs

Read the appropriate reference file based on the task:

• MVT-focused tasks → references/mvt.md
• API / DRF-focused tasks → references/drf.md
• Mixed or architectural tasks → read both

Universal Django Principles

Modern Tooling & Workflow

For a professional setup, always use:

• Linter/Formatter: Ruff (replaces Flake8, Black, isort).
• Package Management: uv or Poetry.
• Dev Tools: django-debug-toolbar (SQL inspection) and django-extensions (for shell_plus).

Project Layout

Always follow this structure for new projects:

project_name/
├── manage.py
├── pyproject.toml           # Modern dependency management
├── config/                  # project-level settings & URLs
│   ├── settings/
│   │   ├── base.py
│   │   ├── dev.py
│   │   └── prod.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py / asgi.py
├── apps/
│   └── <app_name>/
│       ├── models.py
│       ├── views.py
│       ├── urls.py
│       ├── admin.py
│       ├── serializers.py   (DRF only)
│       ├── forms.py         (MVT only)
│       ├── templates/       (MVT only)
│       │   └── <app_name>/
│       ├── static/          (MVT only)
│       └── tests/
│           ├── test_models.py
│           ├── test_views.py
│           └── test_serializers.py
├── requirements/            # Optional if using uv/Poetry
│   ├── base.txt
│   ├── dev.txt
│   └── prod.txt
└── .env

Models: Best Practices

from django.db import models
from django.utils.translation import gettext_lazy as _
from django.urls import reverse

class Article(models.Model):
    class Status(models.TextChoices):
        DRAFT     = 'draft',     _('Draft')
        PUBLISHED = 'published', _('Published')

    title: str      = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    slug: str       = models.SlugField(unique=True)
    body: str       = models.TextField()
    status: str     = models.CharField(max_length=20, choices=Status.choices, default=Status.DRAFT)
    author          = models.ForeignKey('auth.User', related_name='articles')
    created_at      = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    updated_at      = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['-created_at']
        indexes  = [models.Index(fields=['slug'])]

    def __str__(self) -> str:
        return self.title

    def get_absolute_url(self) -> str:
        return reverse('blog:detail', kwargs={'slug': self.slug})

Key rules:

• Always add __str__ and get_absolute_url.
• Use type hints for model fields where appropriate.
• Use TextChoices / IntegerChoices instead of raw string tuples.
• Add related_name to every ForeignKey.
• Index fields you'll filter or order by frequently.
• Security: Run python manage.py check --deploy before any production release.

Custom User Model

Always set up a custom user model before the first migration. Never build on the default User if there's any chance you'll need to customize it later.

# apps/accounts/models.py
from django.contrib.auth.models import AbstractUser

class User(AbstractUser):
    bio = models.TextField(blank=True)
    avatar = models.ImageField(upload_to='avatars/', null=True, blank=True)

# config/settings/base.py
AUTH_USER_MODEL = 'accounts.User'

URLs

Use app_name in every urls.py for namespace support:

# apps/blog/urls.py
app_name = 'blog'
urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.ArticleListView.as_view(), name='list'),
    path('<slug:slug>/', views.ArticleDetailView.as_view(), name='detail'),
]

# In templates: {% url 'blog:detail' article.slug %}
# In code: reverse('blog:detail', kwargs={'slug': article.slug})

Django Admin

Register models with a proper ModelAdmin — never just admin.site.register(Model) alone:

from django.contrib import admin
from .models import Article

@admin.register(Article)
class ArticleAdmin(admin.ModelAdmin[Article]):
    list_display: list[str]  = ['title', 'status', 'author', 'created_at']
    list_filter: list[str]   = ['status', 'author']
    search_fields: list[str] = ['title', 'body']
    prepopulated_fields      = {'slug': ('title',)}
    raw_id_fields: list[str] = ['author']
    date_hierarchy: str      = 'created_at'

Environment Variables

Always use python-decouple or django-environ. Never hardcode secrets:

# base.py
from decouple import config

SECRET_KEY = config('SECRET_KEY')
DEBUG       = config('DEBUG', default=False, cast=bool)
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': config('DB_NAME'),
        'USER': config('DB_USER'),
        'PASSWORD': config('DB_PASSWORD'),
        'HOST': config('DB_HOST', default='localhost'),
        'PORT': config('DB_PORT', default='5432'),
    }
}

Reference Files

Load both for tasks that combine API endpoints + rendered pages (common in hybrid apps).

Source: shohanur-shoron/Django-Skills — distributed by TomeVault.