What is Django Used For? The Six Most Common Applications

Django is a web app framework based upon Python, but is not a part of Python. Python being open-source language, easy to learn and adapt, has become the programming language of choice for beginners as well as seasoned developers in recent years. Django was created to support web application development, web APIs, web services. Thanks to rising popularity of Python, Django too became a framework of choice for python developers.

But, why Django specifically? Why are popular social networking sites, online magazines and e-commerce sites using Django? Why is it so popularly used by developers? Let’s find out what Django is used for.

6 Ways Developers are Using Django

1. For scalable web applications:

Django is best suited for building scalable web applications. The framework offers most functionalities that programmers look to include in a web application. It is easier to build upon using the components offered in Django rather than build custom components. This saves developers time and also fast tracks development.

Django also has good support from community and third party libraries. These can be leveraged to further enhance the features, add new components / modules to the web application and scale up the project.

Django also offers flexibility to extend functionalities and features. This makes it an apt choice for building scalable SaaS and web applications. So it’s very simple and reliable to grow your web application with lesser coding.

The framework is also very modular and also supports REST framework
which makes it more desirable for developers. APIs can be easily
integrated to add more advanced features and functionalities to the
application. This also allows developers to use the built-in API
browser for testing API endpoints.

2. Django is used for applications with multiple user roles:

Django is most suitable for building SaaS and web application dashboards
with multiple user roles. Django offers an extensive web admin interface which is generated automatically on building web applications. The admin panel is well structured and it allows developers to manage users and other data fields. It offers easy account creation and form validations required for building user profiles and manage other nifty details such as username, email, address, phone number, etc.

Such features are hardly available in other frameworks, let alone open-
source frameworks. This helps developers prototype and build MVP
faster by focusing on adding new features and components.

3. For building speedy SaaS applications:

Django allows you to build faster applications as Django supports async view. Utilising asynchronous code in web applications you can effectively increase the performance of your application. Thus writing the I/O processes in async way can incrementally increase the performance.

For SaaS or enterprise applications async views can also be used for
calling third party APIs, sending emails, and performing read/write
operations.

4. Secure E-commerce and Enterprise applications:

Security is vital to any web application. Django provides effective protection against most common threats that a typical application is
exposed to.

Django’s template system allows protection against majority of Cross Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. It does so by escaping specific characters that are dangerous in HTML. This effectively blocks attackers from injecting client-side scripts into the web pages of Django application. It is also possible to turn off this protection to implement your own security protocols for the application.

Django also provides a strong defense against clickjacking. Clickjacking allows attacker to hijack clicks meant for visible top level link and route them to a malicious page hidden beneath that link. Such attacks are common on applications featuring payments such as bank sites, e-commerce web applications.

Such applications also encrypt traffic between site and browser using
SSL/HTTPS. If HTTPS is enabled then Django provides additional
security features such as SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER, SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT, SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE.

5. Django is Used for a building low cost MVP:

Django being open source allows entrepreneurs to arrest the costs otherwise spent on software licensing. Django enables startups and
designers to turn their ideas into a working proof of concept swiftly. This makes Django a cost efficient and efficient tool for developers and creators.

Django being extremely modular, the project becomes a collection of
smaller applications. It enables rapid development and extending
functionalities using Django extensions and Python libraries. Using
these readily available libraries cuts down on the development time
drastically.

6. For building Cross-platform applications:

When building applications creators and developers look to support a
variety of OS and user devices to reach a wider audience. To facilitate this they also need to support compatible deployment environments.

The cross-platform nature of this framework allows support for all the
development and production environment. It also allows the flexibility to run the application code on any platform including PC, Linux, Macintosh.

Thus accounting for the modularity and flexibility that the framework
allows developers, Django can be used for a variety of applications
typically used by enterprises and well as laymen. Let’s take a look
at the possibilities of where Django can be typically used:

• It can be used for creating social networking sites wherein both security and multiple user roles is of paramount importance. Instagram, Youtube, Disqus are some popular social networking sites that use Django.
• It is also well suited for applications requiring Content Management Systems (CMS) such as newspaper website, online magazines or blogs with heavy traffic. The Washington Times is a well know American daily newspaper using Django.
• The cross-platform support can allow you to create mobile friendly web applications for Android and iOS devices.
• It can be used for building transactional or commerce websites wherein security is of paramount importance. The secure environment and built in security features of Django framework allows users a peace of mind as it can thwart common malicious scripts and cyberattacks.
• The security aspects along with Django extensions and libraries can also allow one to create robust payments solutions and booking engines for e-commerce applications.
• Django is well suited for building scalable SaaS solutions and CRM systems. The flexibility allowed by Django framework coupled with Python libraries make it a right fir. Also the continued support of developer community for the framework ensures the backbone of the application remains robust and secure.

Django can also be used for creating small utilities or fun projects such as this utility to resize image which was created using django.

We hope this list of 6 Django applications helped you understand what the Django framework is used for.

For more reading, be sure to check out:

1. https://hackernoon.com/tagged/django
2. https://hackernoon.com/tagged/django-tips