Build a Social Network With Django – Part 1

In this four-part tutorial series, you’ll build a social network with Django that you can showcase in your portfolio. This project will strengthen your understanding of relationships between Django models and show you how to use forms so that users can interact with your app and with each other. You’ll also learn how to make your site look good by using the Bulma CSS framework.

In the first part of this tutorial series, you’ll learn how to:

• Implement one-to-one and many-to-many relationships between Django models
• Extend the Django user model with a custom Profile model
• Customize the Django admin interface

After finishing the first part of this series, you’ll move on to the second part, where you’ll learn to integrate Bulma to style your app and implement the front-end interface and logic so that your users can follow and unfollow each other.

You can download the code for the first part of this project by clicking the link below and going to the source_code_final/ folder:

Get Source Code: Click here to get the source code you’ll use to start building a social network with Django.

Demo

In this four-part tutorial series, you’ll build a small social network that allows users to post short text-based messages. The users of your app can follow other users to see their posts or unfollow them to stop seeing their posts:

By the end of this tutorial series, you’ll also learn to use the CSS framework Bulma to give your app a user-friendly appearance and make it an impressive part of your web development portfolio that you can be proud to show off.

In the first part of this series, you’ll plan the project, create a base Django web app, and extend the built-in user model with a post-save hook. At the end of this part, you’ll be able to create new users through the Django admin interface and your app will automatically generate a profile for each new user and set up the necessary connection:

The back-end user implementation lays the foundation that you’ll build on in the upcoming parts.

Project Overview

In this section, you’ll get a solid idea of what you’ll build and why you’ll build it in this way. You’ll also dig into the database relationships that you’ll implement, and you’ll come up with a complete project outline ready to go. In short, you’ll set some time aside to brainstorm your project idea.

Once you’ve worked out your plan, you’ll start the practical implementation steps for the first part of the series, which focuses on Django models and their relationships:

Step 1	Set Up the Base Project
Step 2	Extend the Django User Model
Step 3	Implement a Post-Save Hook

To get a high-level idea of how you’ll work through all four parts of this series on building your Django social network, you can expand the collapsible section below:

You’ll implement the project in a series of steps spread out over four parts. There’s a lot to cover, and you’ll go into detail along the way:

📍 Part 1: Models and Relationships

• Step 1: Set Up the Base Project
• Step 2: Extend the Django User Model
• Step 3: Implement a Post-Save Hook

⏭ Part 2: Templates and Front-End Styling

• Step 4: Create a Base Template With Bulma
• Step 5: List All User Profiles
• Step 6: Access Individual Profile Pages

⏭ Part 3: Follows and Dweets

• Step 7: Follow and Unfollow Other Profiles
• Step 8: Create the Back-End Logic For Dweets
• Step 9: Display Dweets on the Front End

⏭ Part 4: Forms and Submissions

• Step 10: Submit Dweets Through a Django Form
• Step 11: Prevent Double Submissions and Handle Errors
• Step 12: Improve the Front-End User Experience

Each of these steps will provide links to any necessary resources and give you a chance to pause and come back at a later point, in case you want to take a break.

You might be eager to start programming, but before beginning to work on any coding project, it helps to think about the structure of what you want to build.

You can use pseudocode, written specifications, database diagrams, notebook scribbles, or anything that feels accessible and helps you think. Don’t skip this part! It’s an essential step for building any project. The time that you invest in planning will drastically reduce your implementation time.

So, what do you need for a social network? In its most basic form, you need two things:

1. User-to-user connections that allow people to connect with one another
2. Content creation and display functionality so that your users can create output for their connected users to view

You can think of these two topics as separate from each other, but you’ll need them both for your social network to function as expected.

Profiles for User-to-User Connections

Read the full article at https://realpython.com/django-social-network-1/ »

---

[ Improve Your Python With 🐍 Python Tricks 💌 – Get a short & sweet Python Trick delivered to your inbox every couple of days. >> Click here to learn more and see examples ]

from Real Python
read more