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Day 1 of 5
⏱ ~60 minutes
Django in 5 Days — Day 1

Models and the Django ORM

Create a Django project, define your first models, run migrations, and query the database — no raw SQL required.

Starting a Django Project

Django's tooling creates a ready-to-run project structure in seconds.

Terminal
pip install django
django-admin startproject mysite .
python manage.py startapp blog
# Add 'blog' to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py
python manage.py runserver
blog/models.py
from django.db import models
from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class Post(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=200)
    slug = models.SlugField(unique=True)
    body = models.TextField()
    author = models.ForeignKey(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    created_at = models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True)
    published = models.BooleanField(default=False)

    class Meta:
        ordering = ['-created_at']

    def __str__(self):
        return self.title
Terminal
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser
Django Shell — QuerySet API
python manage.py shell
>>> from blog.models import Post
>>> Post.objects.all()
>>> Post.objects.filter(published=True)
>>> Post.objects.filter(title__icontains='django')
>>> Post.objects.exclude(published=False)
>>> Post.objects.order_by('-created_at')[:5]
>>> post = Post.objects.get(slug='my-first-post')
>>> post.title
>>> Post.objects.count()
💡
Register your model in blog/admin.py: from .models import Post; admin.site.register(Post). Then visit /admin with your superuser credentials. You get a full CRUD UI for free.
📝 Day 1 Exercise
Build a Blog Database
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Day 1 Summary

  • django-admin startproject and startapp scaffold your project structure.
  • Models are Python classes. Fields map to database columns. Django creates the SQL.
  • makemigrations generates migration files. migrate applies them to the database.
  • The QuerySet API: .filter(), .exclude(), .get(), .order_by(), .count().
Next →
Day 2: Views and URLs
→
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