Upgrading Django to a newer version isn’t a complicated task, but it definitely requires some carefulness to ensure that the entire process is smooth and doesn’t affect your project in any unforeseen ways. Here’s how you can upgrade Django to a newer version:
First, it’s essential to check whether your application is compatible with the newer version of Django. You can do this by checking the Django upgrade release notes. These release notes contain detailed information on the changes that you might expect with the newer version of Django, including backward-incompatible changes, deprecated features, and removal of old features. The official Django documentation and release notes are reliable sources to get this information (Source: Django Project Documentation).
Once you have confirmed your application’s compatibility, you should ideally test your application with the new Django version in a virtual environment. A virtual environment is a tool that helps keep dependencies required by different projects separate (Source: Python Official Documentation). You can create a new virtual environment using the venv module available with Python. For instance, if you are using a Unix or MacOS platform, you can use the following command in the terminal:
```
python3 -m venv tutorial-env
```
(Source: Python Docs, venv – Creation of virtual environments).
Once you have made your venv, activate it, and then you will be able to install an isolated instance of the Django version you want to upgrade to using the following pip command:
```
pip install Django==version_number
```
Replace the ‘version\_number’ with the version you want to upgrade to. Run your application within this environment to test it.
It is crucial to extensively test your application with the newer Django version before completely upgrading. A combination of unit tests, integration tests and manual testing is usually a good approach to ensure that everything works fine.
Once you’re confident that your application works fine with the newer Django version, you can proceed with upgrading Django in your project. You aim to replace your existing Django version with the new one in the requirements.txt file of your project. You need to identify the line specifying the Django version, which should look something like `Django==2.2.10`. Change this to the newer version; for example, `Django==3.0.5`.
After you have made changes to the requirements.txt file, you can run the following command to install the newer Django version:
```
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
After the successful execution of this command, your Django version should have been upgraded. This was a hands-on, tested approach on how to upgrade Django (Source: Real Python).
But please understand that the upgrade is a significant step and needs thorough testing. Remember to make a backup of your project and environment first, as it might not always work perfectly and you may need to rollback and remain on your current version.
