CODEWITHSUNDEEP
pythondjango
Kerry Ritter
Kerry Ritter

Reputation: 1187

Django - What constitutes an app?

I'm build a Django app with a number of models (5-10). There would be an admin side, where an end-user manages the data, and then a user side, where other end-users can only read the data. I understand the point of a Django app is to encourage modularity, but I'm unsure as to "where the line is drawn" so-to-speak.

In "best practices terms": Should each model (or very related groups of models) have their own app? Should there be an 'admin' app and then a 'frontend' app?

In either case, how do the other apps retrieve and use models/data inside other apps?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 116

Answers (2)

TitanFighter
TitanFighter

Reputation: 5084

Python\Django is modular.

  1. App should include just those models which usually solve 1 concrete task.
  2. If some of models from p.1 can be usefull in other tasks, then probably would be better to create a new apps for those models. Ie if some models are shared between multiple tasks then there is a logic to make a new apps with those models.

For example you have a forum app. This forum has such features like, polls, registrations, PM, etc. Logically everything seems to be combined together. However, if your site is just a forum - ok, but if there are other content, for example blogs with comments, then "registration model" can be made as a separate app and can be shared between parts of site such as "blogs with comments" and "forum".

Regarding admin\frontend. Ive seen apps\projects with more than 10 models together. Based on the forum example above, if the admin part does not do any task out of scope of your app, then I would make admin and front-end inside of one app. Otherwise, if admin has any relation to another task, which is out of scope of your main app - admin should be as a seperate app.

Upvotes: 1

Mad Wombat
Mad Wombat

Reputation: 15105

Apps are logical separators. For example, if your site has blogs, polls and feeds, you might have blog, poll and feed apps. Each app might have multiple models (Blog and Post models for blogs for example), but be separated from each other by function.

You don't strictly have to separate things into separate apps if you don't want to. Splitting things into apps does help a lot with overcrowding. If you think you will grow beyond 10 models you might consider splitting up before it becomes too hard (django really doesn't like you to move stuff between apps).

As for accessing things from other apps, each app is a module, so all you do is

from app1.models import App1Model

and you are all set.

Upvotes: 3

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