After working on my own php + mysql system for Purchase Order Generation, I realised that in order to get the code 'right' - I'd need to rewrite it multiple times in order to utilies the Object Orientated advantages.  After rewriting a single page about three times, each time improving my code and making it more scalable, I felt that I was wasting my time.. as each time I finished it, I'd improved myself sufficiently to see a better way of doing things. How annoying.

For the last few months, I've been looking to Django.. not for this project - but as something to be used for designing some private websites.  It looked neat, used python (and language that I find quite intuitive) and a few guys from SBLUG used it.. so I knew I had some people to go to for support.  However, my first few attempts at the tutorial involved me really immersing myself in the framework.. and having not used a framework before, I really wanted to undestand the entire structure of what I was doing.

Finally, I was able to designate a portion of my time to this new Django project.  Since my php+mysql project needed rewriting, I thought Django would be a good way to kickstart that.. and I wasn't wrong.  I don't think I'd have had much success had this been my first exposure to Django, but I managed to get things ticking over quite smoothly.  I went through creating my models and populating the database with ease.  There were a couple of problems that I had to get the guys in #django, and the lovely Danux from SBLUG to help me with.

Despite all that, what had taken me a few rewrites to do in php+mysql was running great in Django.  I'd even managed to set things up so that the functonality I needed could be provided entirely thorough the admininstration interface.  Coupled with the brilliant contributed permissions and user/group modules - I was able to set everything up exactly how I wanted.. with much more functionality that I could have hoped to acheive using my previous approach.

So, God Bless Django.. and I hope that this is the beginning of a fantastic partnership.

 

all my code is available on Launchpad.. www.launchpad.net/~andylockran