Django installation

If you already worked through the Installation steps then you've already done this - you can go straight to the next chapter!

Part of this section is based on tutorials by Geek Girls Carrots (http://django.carrots.pl/).

Part of this section is based on the django-marcador tutorial licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. The django-marcador tutorial is copyrighted by Markus Zapke-Gründemann et al.

Virtual environment

Before we install Django, we'll get you to install an extremely useful tool that will help keep your coding environment tidy on your computer. It's possible to skip this step, but it's highly recommended not to - starting with the best possible setup will save you a lot of trouble in the future!

So, let's create a virtual environment (also called a virtualenv). It will isolate your Python/Django setup on a per-project basis, meaning that any changes you make to one website won't affect any others you're also developing. Neat, right?

All you need to do is find a directory in which you want to create the virtualenv; your home directory, for example. On Windows it might look like C:\Users\Name\ (where Name is the name of your login).

For this tutorial we will be using a new directory djangogirls from your home directory:

mkdir djangogirls
cd djangogirls

We will make a virtualenv called myvenv. The general command will be in the format:

python3 -m venv myvenv

Windows

To create a new virtualenv, you need to open the console (we told you about that a few chapters ago - remember?) and run C:\Python34\python -m venv myvenv. It will look like this:

C:\Users\Name\djangogirls> C:\Python34\python -m venv myvenv

where C:\Python34\python is the directory in which you previously installed Python and myvenv is the name of your virtualenv. You can use any other name, but stick to lowercase and use no spaces, accents or special characters. It is also good idea to keep the name short - you'll be referencing it a lot!

Linux and OS X

Creating a virtualenv on both Linux and OS X is as simple as running python3 -m venv myvenv. It will look like this:

~/djangogirls$ python3 -m venv myvenv

myvenv is the name of your virtualenv. You can use any other name, but stick to lowercase and use no spaces. It is also good idea to keep the name short - you'll be referencing it a lot!

NOTE: Initiating the virtual environment on Ubuntu 14.04 like this currently gives the following error:

Error: Command '['/home/eddie/Slask/tmp/venv/bin/python3', '-Im', 'ensurepip', '--upgrade', '--default-pip']' returned non-zero exit status 1

To get around this, use the virtualenv command instead.

~/djangogirls$ sudo apt-get install python-virtualenv
~/djangogirls$ virtualenv --python=python3.4 myvenv

Working with virtualenv

The command above will create a directory called myvenv (or whatever name you chose) that contains our virtual environment (basically a bunch of directory and files). All we want to do now is start it by running:

C:\Users\Name\djangogirls> myvenv\Scripts\activate

on Windows, or:

~/djangogirls$ source myvenv/bin/activate

on OS X and Linux.

Remember to replace myvenv with your chosen virtualenv name!

NOTE: sometimes source might not be available. In those cases try doing this instead:

~/djangogirls$ . myvenv/bin/activate

You will know that you have virtualenv started when you see that the prompt in your console looks like:

(myvenv) C:\Users\Name\djangogirls>

or:

(myvenv) ~/djangogirls$

Notice the prefix (myvenv) appears!

When working within a virtual environment, python will automatically refer to the correct version so you can use python instead of python3.

OK, we have all important dependencies in place. We can finally install Django!

Installing Django

Now that you have your virtualenv started, you can install Django using pip. In the console, run pip install django==1.8 (note that we use a double equal sign: ==).

(myvenv) ~$ pip install django==1.8
Downloading/unpacking django==1.8
Installing collected packages: django
Successfully installed django
Cleaning up...

on Windows

If you get an error when calling pip on Windows platform please check if your project pathname contains spaces, accents or special characters (i.e. C:\Users\User Name\djangogirls). If it does please consider moving it to another place without spaces, accents or special characters (suggestion is: C:\djangogirls). After the move please try the above command again.

on Linux

If you get an error when calling pip on Ubuntu 12.04 please run python -m pip install -U --force-reinstall pip to fix the pip installation in the virtualenv.

That's it! You're now (finally) ready to create a Django application!