Python Django 3.0 is Here — Check What’s New!!

Overview About Django — Features & Benefits

Django is an open-source, high-level and free Python-based web framework, used to develop web applications and database-driven websites. It comes with all essential libraries & tools thus, often known as the “Batteries-included” framework.

One can create a web application with the use of either of any Tkinter GUI toolkit, Flask or Django framework. But which one of these will be the best fit for your project?? When to use Django?? And Why to use Django??

We can use Tkinter GUI for small projects only so, we’ll cancel out this option. Now, we’re left with two more choices, i.e. Flask or Django. As per the very first question, which one will be the best fit for your project, it depends upon your requirements. If you want to create a complex application quickly and easily then Django will be an obvious choice.

In answer to another question as ‘when to use Django’, if you want to build a secure and reliable web application with the least efforts then Django is the best choice to go for. You can also integrate your application with cutting-edge technologies like Machine Learning in the future. In the case of Flask, you will have to do most of the coding by yourself whereas Django makes it easy for you with its built-in libraries.

Major Features of Django- Why Django??

As we reach the next question, ‘why to use Django’, I would say that no framework other than Django will offer simplicity, scalability, security, flexibility and reliability to your applications. It is also rich in very intuitive technical features, such as-

• Simple Syntax
• Operating System Independent
• HTTP libraries
• Own web server
• DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself) Code
• ORM (Object Relational Mapper) Support
• Middleware Support
• MVC (Model-View-Controller) Architecture
• Batteries-included Framework

What’s New with Django 3.0? As we are already aware that Django is a fast, simple and secure framework. It can be considered as an exemplary framework that allows tackling projects of any size whether it is a complex high-load web application or otherwise.

“In an annual survey report by Stack Overflow, Django got the Sixth position in Top-most Loved Web Frameworks List.”

With the up-gradation of the framework, the features have also stepped a level up. Django 3.0 is compatible with the latest versions of Python, i.e. Python 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8. It enables faster database and web applications to be created, precisely and efficiently.

Backwards Incompatible Changes in Django 3.0

• Model.save(): In older versions of Django, Model.save() action used to find a row while saving a new model instance and performed either an INSERT or UPDATE based upon whether the row exists or not. But now, it only performs a single INSERT query always.

You need to call Model.save() while providing a default primary key value equivalent to pass force_insert=True to model’s save(). Any attempts to update an existing row using a new Model instance will result in IntegrityError.

• Python 2 Private APIs: While support for Python 2 was dropped with the release of Django 2.0, some private APIs were still in use. Due to the compatibility issue, some of these APIs have been removed.

• New default value for FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS: Previously, the setting FILE_UPLOAD_PERMISSIONS default to None but now it defaults to 0o644 to avoid the inconsistency aroused due to the default FILE_UPLOAD_HANDLERS setting.

• New default values for Security Settings: To advance the security for Django projects, there have been enhancements in security settings. Now, SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF defaults as ‘True’ while X_FRAME_OPTIONS defaults to ‘DENY’.

Some miscellaneous changes in Django 3.0 are-

• To disambiguate models of same names in different apps, ContentType._ st2 _() includes model’s app_label.

• To escape HTML, Django.utils.html.escape() now works as html.escape().

• Rather than working as a shortcut for –keepdb, the django-admin test -k option now works as unittest -k.

• The option urlencode() now encodes the iterable values, as they are when ‘doseq=False’, instead of iterating and bringing them into line with the urllib.parse.urlencode() function, as used to done earlier.

• RegexPattern, as used by re_path(), does not return ‘None’ values keyword-arguments anymore, to be passed to the view for the optional named missing groups.

Well, this is not it, the list of all the miscellaneous changes is quite long, which you can check out in the Django 3.0 Release Notes.

Removed Features in Django 3.0

Some features have reached to the end of their deprecation cycle, thus, have been removed in Django 3.0, are as follows-

Also,

• Support for PostgreSQL 9.4 has been dropped, now supports versions>= 9.5.
• Support for Oracle 12.1 ended with the release of Django 3.0, now it supports 12.2 and 18c versions.
• Support for pywatchman versions lower than 1.2.0 is removed.
• Support for sqlparse versions less than 0.2.2 is removed.
• Django.contrib.gis: Django 3.0 no longer supports PostGIS 2.1, SpatiaLite 4.1, 4.2, GDAL 1.11 and GEOS 3.4.