13 Best Django and Django REST Tutorials in 2022

Django is a full-stack framework with many attractive features. Let’s explore some of them.

• Django offers excellent documentation
• It has a built-in authentication and URL system
• It’s a mature and easy-to-use database migration framework
• Django makes it possible to customize the admin panel to your needs
• The framework allows you to make each element of the stack independent
• You can use Django to provide end-to-end app testing

Created with web development in mind, Django is highly flexible, allowing developers to replace even crucial parts of the product, such as frontend, as needed.

You can start creating a web application from the idea phase and have a fully developed product within a couple of days without having to plan for a complete rewrite to achieve your long-term goals.

Here are the key advantages of Django:

• open source,
• time-proven,
• facilitates rapid development,
• secure,
• highly adaptable.

Plenty of companies around the world are looking for engineers who have acquired hands-on Django training and know Python very well. As such, it’s no wonder that Django developers are extremely in-demand at the present.

Django can be applied to various modern web application structures. It’s used in production by tech giants like:

• Instagram,
• Spotify,
• Disqus,
• Pinterest.

Unsurprisingly, a number of beginners and professionals are now looking to learn Django, since the salary packages are quite lucrative, too.

The tutorials and courses we’ll discuss today are designed for developers at any level who want to develop a quality web app with the Django framework.

This is a tutorial that stands out for actually covering the latest version of Django—4.0. In fact, you can always count on it including all available versions of Django as it was written by the official Django Software Foundation. That fact alone makes the resource worth checking out, since the foundation promotes and supports the actual progress of the Django web framework.

You’ll create a public site that lets people view polls and vote in them, as well as an admin site that lets you add, change, and delete the polls. It’s not exactly for complete beginners, though, as you’ll have to take care of some initial development environment setup and have at least some grasp of basic Python object programming concepts.

This great resource by Django Girls was created to show people (initially mostly girls) that programming is not that difficult. It was designed for beginners and once you finish it, you’ll have a small working web application—your own blog.

This free, introductory tutorial shows you how to write, make work, and put your blog online. What’s great is that if you work with the tutorial on your own, they have a chat system, where coaches and previous attendees help you with any problems you might have.

This tutorial series on Django is divided into seven parts and focuses on Django fundamentals. It explores in great detail the basic concepts, such as installation and preparation of the development environment, models, views, templates, and URLs.

Although it’s a complete beginner’s guide to start learning Django, you’ll be able to skip the obvious parts and move on to more advanced topics like migrations, testing, and deployment.

What’s really interesting, the author, Vitor Freitas, came up with the idea to create comics to read along with the text to illustrate some concepts and scenarios and make the whole learning experience more enjoyable.

Important note: this tutorial was written for an outdated, 1.11 version of Django. With that said, based on the popularity and the positive feedback it’s still receiving, we decided it was noteworthy enough to recommend maybe checking it out.

In this hour-long video, Mosh Hamedani explains everything you need to know to get started with Django. The video is well-made and very information-dense. Don’t be discouraged by the pace of it, since you can treat it as a warmup before digging a bit deeper later on.

This video is obviously free, but if you like learning with Mosh, you can enroll in his full-time course, where every single thing you need to build fast and secure RESTful APIs with Django is taught in one bundle.

This comprehensive, 10-hour tutorial is for medium-to-advanced developers. It consists of 17 videos that will teach you how to build a full-featured Django app from scratch. The playlist includes getting started with Django, using templates, creating databases, uploading pictures, creating authentication systems, and much more.

Corey Schafer explains everything in detail and describes the logic behind the Django design to help you build a working web app. That way, you learn not only how to code, but also understand how Django works. Some videos are only a couple of minutes long, which makes it all easier to digest.

If you prefer to have everything in one place, here’s a video that’s perfect for you. FreeCodeCamp.org is a global community of millions of people learning to code together, and this is their full Django web framework course for beginners.

It lasts 4 hours and is divided into almost 50 sections. It will be best for programmers in a hurry, as it moves rather quickly from one point to another. The pacing is great, while the tutorial is clear and easy to process.

This is one of the best online courses on Django 3. Nick Walter, one of the most popular and highly praised instructors on Udemy, teaches you how to create three websites using HTML5, CSS3, and Bootstrap 4 for the frontend, and Python and Django for the backend.

It’ll be great for both beginners and a bit more advanced Python developers.

Duration: 8.5 hour

Cost: $10–67, depending on the offer

If you’re looking for an advanced course on Python, Django, and web development, the one created by Mark Winterbottom and Brooke Rutherford is perfect for you.

This course is great for anyone who wants to become a full-stack Python developer, as you will learn to build a REST API with Python and Django as well as Docker, and how to use test-driven development (TDD) for building quality software and completing projects on time.

Duration: 8 hours

Cost: $16–29, depending on the offer

In this course by Nick Walter, you will learn by building three websites from scratch. You will code both the frontend and backend, and publish your site online with Digital Ocean, one of the most popular cloud providers among developers.

Additionally, throughout the course, Nick shows the process of fixing any unexpected errors that you may encounter in the development process.

Duration: 10 hours

Cost: $16–123, depending on the offer

This Python and Django course created by Brad Traversy offers more than 11 hours of videos and exercises. You’ll learn how to use Python, build a website with Django and PostgreSQL, create a virtual environment, and deploy the web app. It’s dedicated to beginners, but more advanced programmers will find it useful, too.

Cost: $17–74, depending on the offer

In this Pluralsight Django course for complete beginners by Reindert-Jan Ekker, you will learn the basics of web development with the Django framework. It will teach you how to create pages using Django templates, add URL mappings for these pages, handle user interaction with forms, and how to store and manipulate data.

After finishing the course, you’ll have a good overview of all the essential parts of Django and how they work together so that you can go on and build your own websites.

Duration: 2.5 hour

Cost: Pluralsight is a platform that works on monthly subscriptions. For $29 per month or $299 per year, you can get access to their 7,000+ online courses created by experts on the latest technology. You can also use their 10-day-free-pass to watch this course for free.

This is one of the most popular Django courses on Udemy. It was created by Jose Portilla, who follows a bootcamp style of teaching, which is great to learn new skills like Django.

The course will teach you not just Django, but also other related technologies like HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, and Python 3 required for full-stack web development. You’ll understand HTTP requests, create landing pages, and finally create a fully functional website.

It is also the longest course on this list—it lasts 32 hours and is both for complete beginners, professionals looking to bridge gaps in their knowledge, and Python developers looking to get into web development.

Important note: this course was also written for an outdated, 1.11 version of Django. However, based on the positive comments it’s still receiving, we decided it was a worthy resource for learning.

Cost: $17–123, depending on the offer

Last but not least, there is an ebook on our list.

It’s highly recommended and popular among developers, as it’s being revised and updated depending on the latest versions of Django and Python. The first edition was launched in 2013 by Dr. Leif Azzopardi and Dr. David Maxwell, web development professors at the University of Glasgow.

The latest version costs $20, but previous editions of the book are available for free here.

According to the authors, “In this edition, you will learn how to build web applications using Django by building a simple app called Rango, a directory of categories and links. Through the process, you’ll learn how to set up your Django projects, create models, views, and mappings, as well as user authentication, templates, class-based views, and testing.”

A great resource, no matter the skill level.