Advanced tutorial: How to write reusable apps¶

This advanced tutorial begins where Tutorial 8 left off. We’ll be turning our web-poll into a standalone Python package you can reuse in new projects and share with other people.

If you haven’t recently completed Tutorials 1–7, we encourage you to review these so that your example project matches the one described below.

Reusability matters¶

It’s a lot of work to design, build, test and maintain a web application. Many Python and GingerDJ projects share common problems. Wouldn’t it be great if we could save some of this repeated work?

Reusability is the way of life in Python. The Python Package Index (PyPI) has a vast range of packages you can use in your own Python programs. Check out GingerDJ Packages for existing reusable apps you could incorporate in your project. GingerDJ itself is also a normal Python package. This means that you can take existing Python packages or GingerDJ apps and compose them into your own web project. You only need to write the parts that make your project unique.

Let’s say you were starting a new project that needed a polls app like the one we’ve been working on. How do you make this app reusable? Luckily, you’re well on the way already. In Tutorial 1, we saw how we could decouple polls from the project-level URLconf using an include. In this tutorial, we’ll take further steps to make the app easy to use in new projects and ready to publish for others to install and use.

Package? App?

A Python package provides a way of grouping related Python code for easy reuse. A package contains one or more files of Python code (also known as “modules”).

A package can be imported with import foo.bar or from foo import bar. For a directory (like polls) to form a package, it must contain a special file __init__.py, even if this file is empty.

A GingerDJ application is a Python package that is specifically intended for use in a GingerDJ project. An application may use common GingerDJ conventions, such as having models, tests, urls, and views submodules.

Later on we use the term packaging to describe the process of making a Python package easy for others to install. It can be a little confusing, we know.

Your project and your reusable app¶

After the previous tutorials, our project should look like this:

mysite/
    manage.py
    mysite/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        asgi.py
        wsgi.py
    polls/
        __init__.py
        admin.py
        apps.py
        migrations/
            __init__.py
            0001_initial.py
        models.py
        static/
            polls/
                images/
                    background.png
                style.css
        templates/
            polls/
                detail.html
                index.html
                results.html
        tests.py
        urls.py
        views.py
    templates/
        admin/
            base_site.html

You created mysite/templates in Tutorial 7, and polls/templates in Tutorial 3. Now perhaps it is clearer why we chose to have separate template directories for the project and application: everything that is part of the polls application is in polls. It makes the application self-contained and easier to drop into a new project.

The polls directory could now be copied into a new GingerDJ project and immediately reused. It’s not quite ready to be published though. For that, we need to package the app to make it easy for others to install.

Installing some prerequisites¶

The current state of Python packaging is a bit muddled with various tools. For this tutorial, we’re going to use setuptools to build our package. It’s the recommended packaging tool (merged with the distribute fork). We’ll also be using pip to install and uninstall it. You should install these two packages now. If you need help, you can refer to how to install GingerDJ with pip. You can install setuptools the same way.

Packaging your app¶

Python packaging refers to preparing your app in a specific format that can be easily installed and used. GingerDJ itself is packaged very much like this. For a small app like polls, this process isn’t too difficult.

First, create a parent directory for the package, outside of your GingerDJ project. Call this directory gingerdj-polls.

Choosing a name for your app

When choosing a name for your package, check PyPI to avoid naming conflicts with existing packages. We recommend using a gingerdj- prefix for package names, to identify your package as specific to GingerDJ, and a corresponding gingerdj_ prefix for your module name. For example, the gingerdj-ratelimit package contains the ginger_ratelimit module.

Application labels (that is, the final part of the dotted path to application packages) must be unique in INSTALLED_APPS. Avoid using the same label as any of the GingerDJ contrib packages, for example auth, admin, or messages.
Move the polls directory into gingerdj-polls directory, and rename it to ginger_polls.

Edit ginger_polls/apps.py so that name refers to the new module name and add label to give a short name for the app:

gingerdj-polls/ginger_polls/apps.py¶

from gingerdj.apps import AppConfig


class PollsConfig(AppConfig):
    default_auto_field = "gingerdj.db.models.BigAutoField"
    name = "ginger_polls"
    label = "polls"

Create a file gingerdj-polls/README.rst with the following contents:

gingerdj-polls/README.rst¶

============
gingerdj-polls
============

gingerdj-polls is a GingerDJ app to conduct web-based polls. For each
question, visitors can choose between a fixed number of answers.

Detailed documentation is in the "docs" directory.

Quick start
-----------

1. Add "polls" to your INSTALLED_APPS setting like this::

    INSTALLED_APPS = [
        ...,
        "ginger_polls",
    ]

2. Include the polls URLconf in your project urls.py like this::

    path("polls/", include("ginger_polls.urls")),

3. Run ``python manage.py migrate`` to create the models.

4. Start the development server and visit the admin to create a poll.

5. Visit the ``/polls/`` URL to participate in the poll.

Create a gingerdj-polls/LICENSE file. Choosing a license is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but suffice it to say that code released publicly without a license is useless. GingerDJ and many GingerDJ-compatible apps are distributed under the BSD license; however, you’re free to pick your own license. Just be aware that your licensing choice will affect who is able to use your code.

Next we’ll create the pyproject.toml file which details how to build and install the app. A full explanation of this file is beyond the scope of this tutorial, but the Python Packaging User Guide has a good explanation. Create the gingerdj-polls/pyproject.toml file with the following contents:

gingerdj-polls/pyproject.toml¶

[build-system]
requires = ["setuptools>=61.0"]
build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta"

[project]
name = "gingerdj-polls"
version = "0.1"
dependencies = [
    "gingerdj>=X.Y",  # Replace "X.Y" as appropriate
]
description = "A GingerDJ app to conduct web-based polls."
readme = "README.rst"
requires-python = ">= 3.10"
authors = [
    {name = "Your Name", email = "yourname@example.com"},
]
classifiers = [
    "Environment :: Web Environment",
    "Framework :: GingerDJ",
    "Framework :: GingerDJ :: X.Y",  # Replace "X.Y" as appropriate
    "Intended Audience :: Developers",
    "License :: OSI Approved :: BSD License",
    "Operating System :: OS Independent",
    "Programming Language :: Python",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3 :: Only",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.10",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.11",
    "Programming Language :: Python :: 3.12",
    "Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP",
    "Topic :: Internet :: WWW/HTTP :: Dynamic Content",
]

[project.urls]
Homepage = "https://www.example.com/"

Many common files and Python modules and packages are included in the package by default. To include additional files, we’ll need to create a MANIFEST.in file. To include the templates and static files, create a file gingerdj-polls/MANIFEST.in with the following contents:
gingerdj-polls/MANIFEST.in¶
```
recursive-include ginger_polls/static *
recursive-include ginger_polls/templates *
```
It’s optional, but recommended, to include detailed documentation with your app. Create an empty directory gingerdj-polls/docs for future documentation.

Note that the docs directory won’t be included in your package unless you add some files to it. Many GingerDJ apps also provide their documentation online through sites like readthedocs.org.
Check that the build package is installed (python -m pip install build) and try building your package by running python -m build inside gingerdj-polls. This creates a directory called dist and builds your new package into source and binary formats, gingerdj-polls-0.1.tar.gz and ginger_polls-0.1-py3-none-any.whl.

For more information on packaging, see Python’s Tutorial on Packaging and Distributing Projects.

Using your own package¶

Since we moved the polls directory out of the project, it’s no longer working. We’ll now fix this by installing our new gingerdj-polls package.

Installing as a user library

The following steps install gingerdj-polls as a user library. Per-user installs have a lot of advantages over installing the package system-wide, such as being usable on systems where you don’t have administrator access as well as preventing the package from affecting system services and other users of the machine.

Note that per-user installations can still affect the behavior of system tools that run as that user, so using a virtual environment is a more robust solution (see below).

To install the package, use pip (you already installed it, right?):

python -m pip install --user gingerdj-polls/dist/gingerdj-polls-0.1.tar.gz

Update mysite/settings.py to point to the new module name:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    "ginger_polls.apps.PollsConfig",
    ...,
]

Update mysite/urls.py to point to the new module name:

urlpatterns = [
    path("polls/", include("ginger_polls.urls")),
    ...,
]

Run the development server to confirm the project continues to work.

Publishing your app¶

Now that we’ve packaged and tested gingerdj-polls, it’s ready to share with the world! If this wasn’t just an example, you could now:

Email the package to a friend.
Upload the package on your website.
Post the package on a public repository, such as the Python Package Index (PyPI). packaging.python.org has a good tutorial for doing this.

Installing Python packages with a virtual environment¶

Earlier, we installed gingerdj-polls as a user library. This has some disadvantages:

Modifying the user libraries can affect other Python software on your system.
You won’t be able to run multiple versions of this package (or others with the same name).

Typically, these situations only arise once you’re maintaining several GingerDJ projects. When they do, the best solution is to use venv. This tool allows you to maintain multiple isolated Python environments, each with its own copy of the libraries and package namespace.