Our First App

You're probably wondering what the heck I'm talking about when I say app. 0:00 Didn't we just make an app? 0:03 Haven't we been working on an app all along? 0:05 Well, yes and no. 0:07 Django has long had this concept of plugable apps. 0:10 Let's break those two words down though. 0:13 An app is a self contained bit of functionality like a system for 0:15 comments or a way to reference files from Google Drive. 0:18 So for example, if we end up building a solid learning library tool, 0:21 one that other people could easily use and adapt to their own needs, we might release 0:24 it as an app for other Django nuts to install into their projects and use. 0:28 And that brings us to the other word, pluggable, or Django apps that can be 0:32 moved from project to project usually by installing them from the Cheese Shop. 0:36 Since these apps can be plugged into your project we say that they're plugable. 0:40 So a single project is made up of usually multiple apps. 0:44 This is a good thing because it means you often don't have to build a large part 0:48 of your project. 0:51 And who doesn't like extra time off? 0:52 So to create an app we're gonna use the manage.piescript again. 0:55 This time we are gonna use the start app command, 0:58 and the name of the app that we want to create. 1:00 App names are usually the plural form of the main model 1:03 that your app is going to be about. 1:07 I like this convention because it means that you need to have a bit more 1:09 thought put into your work before you just jump in. 1:12 Normally we're like yeah let's go do something but 1:15 often it's a really good idea to plan things out a little bit. 1:17 You can of course rename things later if you change your mind. 1:20 So, our main model is going to be for a course, so let's name the app, courses. 1:24 So we're gonna kill the server there. 1:30 Pythonmanage.py. 1:32 Start app. 1:36 Courses. 1:37 Again, no feedback. 1:39 That's cool that's fine. 1:41 Let's run our server again so we don't forget about it. 1:43 Okay, come over here and refresh our file tree, and 1:46 now we see we have a courses directory. 1:52 So lets look in there. 1:55 Okay, so its at the same level as our 1:56 learning site stub all of our apps are going to live next to each other. 2:01 If we had more apps. 2:05 Right now we only have one. 2:07 And its not really surprising its named courses that's what 2:08 we told it to be called. 2:11 Inside of there we have an admin.py we have models.py, test.py, and views.py. 2:12 We also have a folder called migrations currently though its empty it just has 2:18 the standard init.py in there. 2:21 Those init.pi files, by the way, if you don't already know, 2:24 mark a directory as being a Python module, they're what let us do imports and 2:27 things like that with files that are inside of these directories. 2:32 Most of the time, they are 100% blank. 2:36 We'll explore all of these files in the rest of this course, but for 2:38 now, let's just get the app added into our project. 2:41 We do that by opening up settings.py, and if you hear 2:45 me say something about like our settings file, this is what I'm talking about. 2:51 This file has a lot of stuff in it, and we don't need to worry about most of it. 2:54 About half way down though there is a tuple called installed apps, 2:59 and this thing we need to edit. 3:04 So down here at the bottom, after all of Django's apps, 3:08 we're going to add courses and we're going to end it with a comma, 3:10 because it's a good chance we're going to add more apps later. 3:15 Even if you don't, it's still a good idea to always add that comma. 3:18 Trailing commas are a pretty good habit to pick up when you're writing Python, but 3:22 I am going to apologize now if they cause you just 3:25 all sorts of head aches in other languages like JavaScript. 3:27 Okay, one more thing that I like to change is, 3:31 if we come down just a little bit farther, you will see 3:34 A, there it is, time zone. 3:40 So the time zones are a little picky. 3:44 They are a specific set of time zones. 3:46 They're a fairly standard set, but you can't just put in, 3:50 like, PST for Pacific Standard Time. 3:53 I'll put a link in the teacher notes for all the possible timezones. 3:56 I'm gonna change mine since I'm on the west coast. 4:00 I'm gonna change this to America/Los_Angeles. 4:02 All right, if you want to change the timezone, go for it. 4:05 Change it to whatever your local timezone is and this way if we're using dates or 4:09 times in our project, they'll be correct. 4:13 It probably feels like I stopped just when things got interesting, huh? 4:16 I wanna give you a little bit of time to let projects and apps settle in. 4:19 Also, this just means the next stage will be even more exciting. 4:22