django_skill

Overview

This skill provides concise, practical guidance from the Django 5.0 documentation for building, configuring, and deploying Django applications. It focuses on core areas including authentication, class-based views, contrib apps, database usage, and deployment patterns. Use it to get authoritative, implementation-focused answers and examples for common Django tasks.

How this skill works

The skill inspects the official Django 5.0 docs split into targeted sections (Intro, Howto, Reference, Topics, Internals, and Releases). When you ask a question, it matches your intent to the relevant documentation files (auth, class-based views, db, contrib, deployment, etc.) and returns distilled, actionable guidance. It emphasizes code-level details, configuration options, and recommended workflows for real-world Django development.

When to use it

• You need concrete guidance on authentication flows, permissions, or custom user models.
• You’re implementing or debugging class-based views, generic views, or view mixins.
• You need reference-level details about contrib apps like admin, auth, staticfiles, sitemaps, or flatpages.
• You’re designing database models, queries, transactions, or working with multiple databases.
• You’re preparing a Django app for deployment (ASGI/WSGI configuration, static/media handling, security settings).
• You want practical how‑to steps: custom fields, template tags/filters, file uploads, or writing reusable apps.

Best practices

• Prefer Django’s built-in auth and permission tools; extend the User model only when necessary and follow recommended migration patterns.
• Use generic class-based views and mixins to reduce boilerplate, and override only required hooks (get_context_data, form_valid, etc.).
• Keep settings modular: separate secret/config per environment and use Django’s settings patterns for static/media and caching.
• Write database queries with QuerySet APIs and aggregation tools first; use raw SQL only when necessary and wrap it with proper transactions.
• Follow Django’s testing patterns: use provided test case classes, the test client, and test for multiple host names and async behavior where applicable.

Example use cases

• Add a custom permission and enforce it in both views and the admin site.
• Implement a CreateView with form handling, success URL logic, and optimized queryset usage.
• Configure ASGI deployment with proper application and middleware ordering for async support.
• Create a custom model field or a template filter and register it for reuse across apps.
• Migrate a multi-database setup and implement routing rules for reads and writes.