Welcome to the first unit of our course on managing data with SQLite and Django ORM. Here, we will start with the fundamentals. You will learn how to install and set up a database with SQLite3 and connect it to your Django application. This is a foundational step that will set the stage for more complex data management tasks.

In this section, you will:

1. Set up and configure an SQLite3 database for your Django project.
2. Learn to create and execute raw SQL queries within your Django views.

These steps are crucial because they form the backbone of any data-driven application. By the end of this section, you will be able to configure your database and perform basic data operations.

The first step in configuring the database is to add the necessary settings. Here is a code snippet that shows how to configure the database settings in your Django project:

Python
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1DATABASES = {
2    'default': {
3        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
4        'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
5    }
6}

This configuration specifies that the database engine is SQLite3 and the database file is located in the project's base directory. You can customize these settings based on your requirements.

Note that you will be provided with the database configuration for the upcoming practice tasks. You will only focus on the code that interacts with the database.

In your view defined in myapp/views.py, you will perform basic CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations using raw SQL queries. For this lesson, let's focus on executing simple raw queries to retrieve data from the database:

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1from django.http import HttpResponse
2import sqlite3
3
4def get_items(request):
5    # Create a new SQLite connection for each request
6    connection = sqlite3.connect('db.sqlite3')
7    items = []
8    try:
9        # Retrieve items from the database
10        raw_query = 'SELECT * FROM items'
11        items = connection.execute(raw_query).fetchall()
12    finally:
13        # Close the connection to ensure it is not reused
14        connection.close()
15
16    return HttpResponse(items)

In the code snippet above, we create a new connection to the SQLite3 database, execute a raw SQL query to retrieve all items from the items table, and return the result as an HttpResponse. This is a simple example to demonstrate how to interact with the database using raw SQL queries.

Now, if we send a request to the get_items view, the items from the database will be returned. This is just the beginning of what you can do with SQLite3 and Django. In the upcoming tasks, you will explore more advanced data operations and learn how to use Django's ORM to interact with the database.

Understanding how to install and connect to SQLite3 within a Django framework is essential for any developer. SQLite is a lightweight, serverless database engine that is perfect for development and small applications. It is widely used because it is easy to set up and doesn't require a separate server process.

By mastering these skills, you'll be prepared to manage your application's data and ensure its integrity and accessibility. This forms the basis for more advanced topics, such as using Django's ORM to define data models and create relationships between them.

Excited to start? Let's dive into the hands-on practice section and see these concepts in action!