Django Channels is a powerful tool that allows developers to harness the power of WebSockets in a Django project, which extends the capabilities of HTTP. This can be particularly useful when implementing real-time functionalities, such as a chat application.
To start, install Django Channels and its dependencies in your existing Django project. From the terminal, run:
```
pip install channels
pip install channels_redis
```
Add “channels” in ‘INSTALLED\_APPS’ and also set the default channel layers to use Redis in the Django settings file:
```
INSTALLED_APPS = [
…,
‘channels’,
]
CHANNEL_LAYERS = {
‘default’: {
‘BACKEND’: ‘channels_redis.core.RedisChannelLayer’,
‘CONFIG’: {
“hosts”: [(‘127.0.0.1’, 6379)],
},
},
}
```
After setting up Django channels and its dependencies, create a chat app by command ‘python manage.py startapp chat’. In the routing configuration, import URLRouter and the ‘chat’ application routing configuration.
```
from channels.routing import ProtocolTypeRouter, URLRouter
import chat.routing
application = ProtocolTypeRouter({
# (http->django views is added by default)
‘websocket’: URLRouter(
chat.routing.websocket_urlpatterns
),
})
```
Then in your ‘chat’ application’s routing configuration file, set a URL routing for the WebSocket:
```
from django.urls import re_path
from . import consumers
websocket_urlpatterns = [
re_path(r’ws/chat/(?P
]
```
The consumer can be seen as Django’s equivalent to a view. It’s a Python class where the connection events are handled. The below ‘ChatConsumer’ class is an example.
```
from channels.generic.websocket import AsyncWebsocketConsumer
import json
class ChatConsumer(AsyncWebsocketConsumer): async def connect(self): “”“ Connect method for websocket “”“ …
async def disconnect(self, close_code): “”“ Disconnect method for websocket “”“ … # Receive message from WebSocket async def receive(self, text_data): text_data_json = json.loads(text_data) message = text_data_json[‘message’] … # Receive message from room group async def chat_message(self, event): message = event[‘message’] …```
The Django Channels framework is a powerful tool that offers a lot of flexibility when it comes to building real-time applications. The above steps represent the basic implementation of a very simple chat application, to give you an idea of how one can use Django channels in their project.
Please see the Django Channels official documentation (https://channels.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) for more information.
Sources:
- Django Channels Documentation – https://channels.readthedocs.io/en/latest/
- How to Use WebSockets in Django 3.1 – https://adamj.eu/tech/2020/09/01/how-to-use-websockets-with-django-3.1/
- Django Channels Tutorial – https://gearheart.io/blog/creating-a-chat-with-django-channels/
