Django is a robust open-source web framework written in Python that encourages rapid development and clean, pragmatic design. It is designed to help developers take applications from concept to completion as quickly as possible. On the other hand, MongoDB is a source-available cross-platform document-oriented database program. It can be classified as a NoSQL database that uses JSON-like documents with optional schemas.
To use Django with MongoDB, one of the best ways is to use a tool called Djongo. It is a database connector that enables Django, a Python web-framework, to access MongoDB, a NoSQL database, using Python Database API.
Setting up Django with MongoDB involves several steps:
1. Install Python: The first step is to ensure you have Python installed on your system. MongoDB requires Python 3.6 or later. To download Python visit the official website https://www.python.org/downloads/.
1. Install Django: The next step is to install Django. After making sure that your Python installation was successful, install Django by typing the following command:
```
pip install Django
```
Django can be downloaded from its official website https://www.djangoproject.com/download/.
1. Install MongoDB: MongoDB can be downloaded and installed from its official website https://www.mongodb.com/try/download/community.
1. Install Djongo: Once Django and MongoDB have been installed, the next step is to install Djongo which will serve as the bridge between Django and MongoDB. Installing Djongo is as simple as typing the following command:
```
pip install djongo
```
1. Setting up Django with MongoDB: After installing the necessary software packages, the next step is to set up Django to use MongoDB as its backend. This involves modifying the “DATABASES” section in the settings.py file of your Django project to look like this:
```
DATABASES = {
‘default’: {
‘ENGINE’: ‘djongo’,
‘NAME’: ‘your-db-name’,
}
}
```
Replace “your-db-name” with the name of the MongoDB database that you want to use. This tells Django to use Djongo as the database engine and the specified MongoDB database as the database.
An important aspect to note is that Django’s Object-Relational Mapping (ORM) system and MongoDB are not perfectly compatible due to the intrinsic differences between SQL databases and NoSQL databases. As a result, there may be certain operations or Django features that do not work as expected.
Refer to the documentation for Django (https://www.djangoproject.com/), the documentation for MongoDB (https://www.mongodb.com/), and the documentation for Djongo (https://nesdis.github.io/djongo/) during each step.
By following the steps mentioned you would have configured Django to MongoDB. It is recommended to validate your configuration by running a simple test case of reading and writing data to your MongoDB database via Django.
