When retrieving a single record in Django, the ORM offers two possible methods: .get() and .first(). Let's learn how each one works and when to use them.

Get

Django's most basic way to retrieve a single record is the .get() method. It is used as follows:

burger = Menu.objects.get(name="Beef Burger")

Quick facts about .get():

• It retrieves only one record.

• If no record exists that meets the given criteria, it raises a DoesNotExist exception.

• If more than one record with the given criteria exists, it raises a MultipleObjectsReturned exception.

First

A different way to get one record is …

Python's dynamic typing is great, right? You can just do whatever you want with variables. FREEDOM! ;-) This comes at a price though, and sometimes one we're not always aware of.

Trying not to fail

For years I took advantage of Python's dynamic typing by having functions return an error state via a different data type. For example:

def double(int_input):
    if not isinstance(int_input, int):
        return "An integer must be provided"

    return int_input * 2

And consuming this function would have looked like this:

doubled_int = double(user_input)
if isinstance(doubled_int, str):
    print("You did not provide an integer")
    return

print(f …

Should you use class-based views (CBV's) or function-based views (FBV's) in Django? It seems a lot of people are pushing CBV's, touting them to be the "standard" way of writing views in Django. But why do FBV's still exist then? Just for backward-compatibility? This is my highly opinionated "view" (see what I did there??) on this matter.

The topic is hotly debated. Why are some people so passionate about CBV's? CBVs are said to be better because they abstract a lot of boiler-plate code into base classes and mixins. This is true. As a very basic example, instead of writing …

To save data in Django, you normally use .save() on a model instance. However the ORM also provides a .update() method on queryset objects. So which one should you use? Let's take a look at each, and then decide which one to use in which situations.

Save

The .save() method is used to write a model instance to the database. It can be an existing record or even a new one. For an existing record, Django will run a SQL UPDATE statement on the database. For a new record, Django will run an INSERT. Before Django 3.0, it would …

I asked Reddit about text editors vs IDEs. In particular, I asked VS Code users why they preferred it over IDEs like PyCharm, and then I asked PyCharm users why they preferred it over text editors like VS Code. The results were very interesting.

VSCode users: Why do you prefer it over PyCharm?

PyCharm users: Why do you prefer it over VSCode or other editors?

Results: VS Code

Among VS Code users, the following reasons were listed most:

Results: PyCharm

And among PyCharm users, the following reasons were most common:

Conclusion

Looking at the above, I can conclude a few …