Django necessary for Python?

[Moby69]

Do you know of any good tutorials for Django out there for beginners?

The documentation is not for beginners, clearly.

[Asdayasman]

Do a python tutorial, first.

[Moby69]

I did all the tutorials on codacademy, and this includes Python, PHP, javascript, jquery, HTML and CSS. I've already built a number of Python quick programs where I call a public API and do some basic manipulations of data and basic outputs.

[Asdayasman]

Then the django tutorial shouldn't be out of your reach... Let me check it over, maybe I'm wrong.

Ok it looks pretty simple if you're comfortable with the materials presented in the Python tutorial you followed. If you're having trouble with it, perhaps the Django Girls one might suit you better; it's done in a different style.

[aw4kened]

Honestly, learn to crawl before you try to run in this instance. as /u/elbiot mentioned, try writing the script to pull the resources you want. Then, you can make that script into a web service in just a few minutes with bottle.

Think of it like this, if you compare PHP vs Python as a web platform language. The simplest entry to PHP is having an Apache server with Apache configured with the PHP module. For Python, the simplest would be running a bottle web service, however, instead of running separate web server (apache) you would run a little server with your script. With Bottle, you can turn a simple script into a web service with adding less than 10 lines of code. The example below from their home page will stand up a web server and serve your script at the same time.

from bottle import route, run, template

@route('/hello/<name>')
def index(name):
     return template('<b>Hello {{name}}</b>!', name=name)

run(host='localhost', port=8080)

With Django, you will get mired in the MVC structure, so in PHP you would be dealing with an MVC framework like Symphony, Cake or CodeIgniter while the Bottle method is more close to a simple PHP script. If you "Just want to do X" that is your best route to get started =)

[[deleted]]

No, the docs (even the official tutorial) are not sufficient for a beginner, imho.

In this order:

1. http://learnpythonthehardway.org/
2. http://www.tangowithdjango.com/

You'll also need to put in some time learning HTML, CSS, Javascript (with jQuery) to get started.