Django & JavaScript

History

• ECMAScript 4 never standardised.
• jQuery.
• Template libraries. Some inspired by Django template language.
• Frameworks. AngularJS, etc.
• Seperate templates required for Django and JS.
• Django Compressor and Django Pipeline.
• Django REST framework, Tastypie.
• ECMAScript 6 - officially called ECMAScript 2015.
• Transpilation. For the impatient. Run ECMAScript 6 in ECMAScript 5.
• Angular2 -> Angular, Angular 1 -> AngularJS.
• React + Redux.
• NPM, bower, Yarn. Most people use NPM, as means you can use one tool.
• Grunt, Gulp, Browserify, Rollup, Webpack.
• Typescript, Flow.

ECMAScript 6

• Let/const instead of var.
• String interpolation.
• Multi line strings.
• Arrow functions.
• Module imports.
• Classes.
• Default values for parameters.
• You don’t need to try out every new feature.

Django

• Django webpack loader. Less invasive then Django Pipline.
• Decouple frontend and backend.
• Single page application.
• Automatic provisioning.
• Django has excellent documentation.
• Python react.
• Django channels.
• Django as a microservice.

Which one?

• Building a website or webapp?
• JS for decorative or functional purposes?
• Do you need batteries included? If using framework, need to respect their decisions?

Competition: node.js

• Contenders:

  • sails.js (closest to Django).
  • Meteor.
  • Keystone.
• Smaller communities, less mature.
• One language.
• First class async support.
• Isomorphic render.
• Websockets - good support.

Future

• New functionality all the time.
• Notification APIs. Push notifications to phone.
• Offline Django.
• Django and JS are good friends.