Coursea - Django for Everybody Specialization by University of Michigan

Build & deploy rich web applications using Django. Learn the fundamentals of building a full-featured web site using Django.

Web Application Technologies and Django
In this course, you'll explore the basic structure of a web application, and how a web browser interacts with a web server. You'll be introduced to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) request/response cycle, including GET/POST/Redirect. You'll also gain an introductory understanding of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML), as well as the overall structure of a Django application. We will explore the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern for web applications and how it relates to Django. You will learn how to deploy a Django application using a service like PythonAnywhere so that it is available over the Internet.

This is the first course in the Django for Everybody specialization. It is recommended that you complete the Python for Everybody specialization or an equivalent learning experience before beginning this series.

Building Web Applications in Django
In this course, you will learn how Django communicates with a database through model objects. You will explore Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) for database access and how Django models implement this pattern. We will review the Object-Oriented (OO) pattern in Python. You will learn basic Structured Query Language (SQL) and database modeling, including one-to-many and many-to-many relationships and how they work in both the SQL and Django models. You will learn how to use the Django console and scripts to work with your application objects interactively.

Django Features and Libraries
In this course, you will learn how to build Django-based web applications suitable for use by end users. You will learn about cookies, sessions, and authentication processes in Django. You will build navigation into your applications and explore ways to easily improve the look and feel of Django applications. You will begin to develop a simple application to support a classified ads website that will walk you through many of the issues and techniques that you encounter in website development. You will also learn how to move an application from development to production.

Using JavaScript, JQuery, and JSON in Django
In this final course, we'll look at the JavaScript language and how it supports the Object-Oriented pattern, with a focus on the unique aspects of JavaScript's approach to OO. We'll provide an introduction to the jQuery library, which is widely used for in-browser manipulation of the Document Object Model (DOM) and event handling. You'll also learn about JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), which is commonly used as a syntax to exchange data between code running on the server (i.e., in Django) and code running in the browser (JavaScript/jQuery). You will continue to develop your classified ads application, adding features that make use of JavaScript, JQuery, and JSON. This course assumes you have completed the first three courses in the specialization.