Django Tutorials - Modern Stack (2026 Edition)

This project has been modernized to run on Django 6.0 with a React 18.x frontend powered by Vite.

Tech Stack

Backend: Django 6.x (LTS), Python 3.14+, Django Ninja (API), uv (Package Manager), Pydantic Settings, Ruff.
Frontend: React 18.x, Vite (Build Tool), TanStack Query (Data Fetching), DaisyUI (CSS), ESLint + Prettier.
Automation: Unified Makefile for one-command development.

Follow these steps to set up your local development environment:

This project uses uv for lightning-fast Python dependency management. On macOS, use:

brew install uv

On Linux, follow the instructions for your distribution's package manager.

The project uses a strict configuration schema. You must create a local .env file in the project root or the server will refuse to start:

cp .env.example .env

To generate a secure secret key for your .env file, run:

make secret-key

Note: The .env file is ignored by git to keep your local secrets safe.

Install both Python (via uv) and Node.js (via npm) packages:

make install

Create your local SQLite database and run the initial migrations:

make migrate

Run both the Django backend (port 8000) and Vite frontend (port 3000) in parallel:

make run

To see the most up-to-date list of commands, simply run make help.

Command	Description
`make build`	Build the React frontend for production.
`make clean`	Remove build artifacts, node_modules, and cache.
`make install`	Install all backend and frontend dependencies.
`make lint`	Run all formatters and code quality checks.
`make migrate`	Run Django database migrations.
`make run`	Start both dev servers in parallel.
`make secret-key`	Generate a random Django secret key.
`make settings`	Show differences between current and default settings.
`make test`	Run all backend (Django) and frontend (Vitest) tests.

When the server is running, you can access the automatic Swagger UI for the Django Ninja API at: 👉 http://127.0.0.1:8000/api/docs