Practical Django Projects (Pratical Projects)
I’ll introduce you to Practical Django Projects (Pratical Projects) By James Bennett.
Build a django content management system, blog, and social networking site with James Bennett as he introduces the popular Django framework. You’ll work through the development of each project, implementing and running the applications while learning new features along the way.
Web frameworks are playing a major role in the creation of today’s most compelling web applications, because they automate many of the tedious tasks, allowing developers to instead focus on providing users with creative and powerful features. Python developers have been particularly fortunate in this area, having been able to take advantage of Django, a very popular open source web framework whose stated goal is to “make it easier to build better web applications more quickly with less code.”
Practical Django Projects is the first book to introduce this popular framework by way of a series of real–world projects.
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Number Of Pages: 256
Original Language: English
Unknown: English
Published: English

The Projects Don't Work
Book seems reasonably well written. I learned some things from the first two chapters but, as other reviewers have noted, Django 1.0 and beyond are not compatible with this book. You can Google around and find how different people solved the incompatibilities, but that's painful and not educational.
Apress needs to issue an errata on their site discussing the changes needed. Until they do this, the book's not awfully useful.

Could be perfect BUT these serious flaws:
1) The code examples don't work with the current version of Django.
2) Despite several references to them in the book (eg p111), there are no source code downloads on the Apress website, period. I have emailed and called Apress customer support and received no reply.
3) Not as serious as the previous issues, but there are virtually no screenshots in the book. Even a few would make the code in the book come alive.
Bottom line: The concept is great. The execution, flawed.

Not for Beginners
Another reviewer noted that this was the perfect book for beginners/newbies. It is not. As stated in the book and on the back cover, it is for intermediate folk.
The book makes quite a few assumptions about the reader's level of Django and development experience, as a result it can be a very frustrating experience for a beginner.
Please also note, as other reviewers have noted, that the book's code examples are for Django .9x (update: written for 0.96) and not for 1.0. Apress, the publisher, has not given any updates to the errata nor do they have the book's source code posted. So, if you are not an intermediate python programmer or an intermediate Django developer, you may find yourself throwing this book or your computer in frustration.
Other than that, if I could just figure out which version of Django it is written for, I would love this book.

Good, but already dated.
This is a well-written book that is fairly easy to read. If you're new to Django (or web development in general), this book will teach you how things fit together. There are lots of code examples, and the author walks you through building an app, and then puts the complete code at the end of the section (which I like).
The code in this book seems to be built using the 0.96 release of Django. I started learning with the svn version (leading up to 1.0), and a large number of things work differently than explained in the book. If you buy this book and want to use version 1.0, you'll often need to read through Django's documentation, too. Also, the author periodically explains some basic python syntax in an effort to make the book more accessible to new python users. In my opinion, this could be removed from the book in order to spend more effort explaining Django.
Overall: A good book. I'm glad I bought it.

It's practically a book
Where's the chapter on deployment? You, know, that silly thing you have to do in order to put that practical project up somewhere that people can practically use it. Getting a Django application up and running in such a way as to not destroy your server when you get slashdotted (or whatever the kids call it nowadays) is the one thing nobody on Team Perfectionist seems to know how to do well enough to tell anyone else about, so they simply elect to avoid the subject altogether. What do they talk about instead? Regular expressions! Thank you, Mr. Hideous Neckbeard, I had no idea what regular expressions were until you came along. Your pandering rapport has completely distracted me the fact that the only way to get decent caching behavior out of your framework is to outfit it with third-party solutions that patch up the holes in your code.
This title is marginally better than APress' "Definitive Guide to Django" but not so much so as to make it worth the money they charge. Why it's taking them so long to reach 1.0 is a mystery to me as their "roadmap" is a joke rife with non-features, but this book definitely ain't compatible with the current beta, so it's practically useless.


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