Django Quick Start Guide

In this quickstart, we will show you how to get started with SQLite Cloud and Django by building a simple application that connects to and reads from a SQLite Cloud database.

Set up a SQLite Cloud account

If you haven’t already, sign up for a SQLite Cloud account and create a new project.
In this guide, we will use the sample datasets that come pre-loaded with SQLite Cloud.

Create a Django app

If you haven’t already done so, install Python and Django.
The following command creates an outer directory (the container for your project) AND an inner directory (the Python package for your project). Both directories will be named sqlitecloud_quickstart.

django-admin startproject sqlitecloud_quickstart

The following command creates your app as a separate package within the project container directory.

cd sqlitecloud_quickstart
python manage.py startapp albums

Install the SQLite Cloud Python SDK

Run this command from your current directory (i.e. the outer sqlitecloud_quickstart).

pip install sqlitecloud

App setup

Create a new file albums/services.py and copy in the following code.
In your SQLite Cloud account dashboard, click on a Node, copy the Connection String, and replace <your-connection-string> below.

import sqlitecloud

def get_albums():
  conn = sqlitecloud.connect('<your-connection-string>')

  db_name = "chinook.sqlite"
  db_query = "SELECT albums.AlbumId as id, albums.Title as title, artists.name as artist FROM albums INNER JOIN artists WHERE artists.ArtistId = albums.ArtistId LIMIT 20"

  conn.execute(f"USE DATABASE {db_name}")

  cursor = conn.execute(db_query)

  conn.close()

  result = cursor.fetchall()

  return result

Copy the following code into albums/views.py. This view function invokes the get_albums() function defined in services.py to connect to the database and return album and artist information.
The view function converts each returned row from a list to an object to more easily access the information in our HTML template (will discuss further later).

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.template import loader
from .services import get_albums

def index(request):
  albumsList = get_albums()

  albumObjsList = [{'album': row[1], 'artist': row[2]} for row in albumsList]

  template = loader.get_template("albums/index.html")
  context = {
      "albumObjsList": albumObjsList,
  }
  return HttpResponse(template.render(context, request))

Create a new file albums/urls.py and copy in the following code. This URL configuration (URLconf) maps the above view to a URL so we can access the view in the browser.

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path("", views.index, name="index")
]

Adjust the code in sqlitecloud_quickstart/urls.py to be as follows. We must configure this global URLconf in the inner sqlitecloud_quickstart to include the URLconf we defined above in our app.

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import include, path

# global URLconfs
urlpatterns = [
    path("albums/", include("albums.urls")),
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
]

Now we’ll create a Django template the view can use to render HTML. Under albums, create a new file at templates/albums/index.html and copy in the following code.
- Bear in mind, there are now 2 (outer and inner) albums directories.
- The index view function above is already set up to load and render the template albums/index.html. (NOTE: albums here is the inner albums dir.)

<div>
    <h1>Albums</h1>
    <ul>
    {% for row in albumObjsList %}
        <li>{{ row.album }} by {{ row.artist }}</li>
    {% endfor %}
    </ul>
</div>

Lastly, in sqlitecloud_quickstart/settings.py, configure DIRS in TEMPLATES as follows.
- 'APP_DIRS': True tells Django’s templating engine to look for template source files inside project apps.
- DIRS provides the filepath to the correct app’s templates dir.

TEMPLATES = [
    {
        'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
        'DIRS': ['albums/templates'],
        'APP_DIRS': True,
        'OPTIONS': {
            'context_processors': [
                'django.template.context_processors.debug',
                'django.template.context_processors.request',
                'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
                'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
            ],
        },
    },
]

Run the Django dev server

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/albums/ to see your app data.

FOLLOW-UP: This Quickstart goes a bit deeper into the framework than the other Quickstarts since Django requires more boilerplate to get up-and-running with a simple app.

If you’re new to Django and want to learn more, we referenced the following Django Tutorial pages extensively when writing this Quickstart:

And that’s it! You’ve successfully built a Django app that reads data from a SQLite Cloud database.