Django by example(Antonio Mele) — book review
Tags: python3, bookreview, django
Published: 2018-06-18 16:40:56

---
title: Django by example(Antonio Mele) — book review
published: true
tags: python3,book-review,django
canonical_url: https://medium.com/@periklisgkolias/django-by-example-antonio-mele-book-review-58ba86e0ba00
---

_Disclaimer: At the time of starting to write this article, the next version of the book under review, has not been published yet. If you want to read the newest version, you can find it [here](https://amzn.to/2HX34H7)_

Many people don’t have enough time to research for a book. I think such articles could help people, accelerate their (correct)decision.

That’s why I decided to write this article. This is a quick and dense review of [Django by example by Antonio Mele](https://amzn.to/2HXmwUm)

![](https://cdn-images-1.medium.com/max/810/1*UyiT8nLZ1b8rveOfmscOFw.png)<figcaption>(The cover of the book, from the official publication, <a href="http://packtpub.com/">packtpub.com</a>)</figcaption>

### The idea

The book is trying to teach more advanced [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) techniques to people that are already familiar enough with the framework. And I think it is doing a great job here. I loved the projects included, especially the social network one.

### The projects:

The projects included are

- Create a full-scale blog(pretty much all the expected functionality you can find in a blog) with third-party integrations(Chapters 1, 2, 3)
- Create a basic(but not trivial) social network with images. (Chapter 5, 6)
- Create an online shop with integrated PayPal payments and a recommendation engine(no machine learning, pure hacker stuff :) )
- Create an e-learning platform, with emphasis on the caching mechanisms of Django

### Some of the technologies used(apart from django of course)

- Celery
- jQuery
- AJAX
- [DjangoRestFramework](http://www.django-rest-framework.org/) to help you make your apps [RESTful](https://searchmicroservices.techtarget.com/definition/RESTful-API)

As with all big projects, some flaws are inevitable. They are very few though. The most important I noticed are:

- A few errors in code. Ok, you ‘ll say, which book doesn’t?
- The book is working with version 1.8. Not a fault of the author, of course, it is just that the book came out 3 years ago and we are at version 2 now.

### Shall I read it?

It is a book that I found enjoyable and useful for my projects. So in my humble opinion:

- Totally, if you are interested in becoming better on [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/). It might be of a somewhat older version but the concepts discussed are not affected much
- Totally not, if you are not interested in becoming a better [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) developer or you don’t know the basics of [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) :) In the latter case, there are various sources to prepare you. For example [NetNinja](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4cUxeGkcC9ib4HsrXEYpQnTOTZE1x0uc) and [Sentdex](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQVvvaa0QuDeA05ZouE4OzDYLHY-XH-Nd) or even the [official](https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.0/intro/tutorial01/) tutorials.

### Conclusion

Thank you for reading this article. I hope you found the review useful and please feel free to give me some love or/and comment below if you liked it. Happy learning.

_Originally published at perigk.github.com._