Django Style Guide

Guidelines to write an awesome Django project!

Recommended Apps

DRY! Django has many apps available, and a lot of them can help you to develop your project in a cleaner and faster way. Here we created a curated list of Apps that can help you:

Form related

1. django-crispy-forms
2. django-autocomplete-light
3. django-localflavor

List related

1. django-tables2
2. django-filter

Static files related

1. django_compressor
2. django-static-precompiler

General Apps

1. django-password
2. django-auditlog
3. django-simple-menu
4. django-annoying

Debug and CLI

1. django-extensions
2. IPython

URLs

URLs names for simple models should follow this format:

{app_name}_{model_name}_{action}

Default actions are:

• add: for object creation page
• list: for listing the model's objects
• change: to change a model's object
• delete: to change a model's object
• view: to view a model's object information

Permissions

Permissions should follow this format:

{action}_{model}

And the verbose name for the permission should use verbose_name or verbose_plural_name defined

If a permission is used too often (like a view permission), you can create an abstract Meta class with this permission as default, and inherit from it on your model's Meta:

from django.db import models

class ViewMeta:
    default_permissions = ('add', 'change', 'delete', 'view')

class Foo(models.Model):
    class Meta(ViewMeta):
        # Other meta configurations
        verbose_name = "Foo"
        verbose_name_plural = "Foos"
        ordering = ["-id"]
        permissions = []

    # fields definition

Models

All models should have a Meta class, and at least those fields should be defined (in this order) on the Meta (even if they are empty or follow default Django behaviour):

1. verbose_name
2. verbose_plural_name
3. ordering
4. permissions

Meta class should be defined at the beginning of the class, which allows ou to get an overview of the Model without scrolling the code. You must have one blank line between the Meta definition and the fields definition

All fields must have a verbose_name

from django.db import models

class Foo(models.Model):
    class Meta:
        verbose_name = "Foo"
        verbose_name_plural = "Foos"
        ordering = ["-id"]
        permissions = [('move_foo', "Move {}"), ]

    field1 = models.CharField(max_length=255, verbose_name="Field 1")
    field2 = models.Integer(verbose_name="Field 2")