Glossary

concrete model

A non-abstract (abstract=False) model.

field

An attribute on a model; a given field usually maps directly to a single database column.

See Models.

generic view

A higher-order view function that provides an abstract/generic implementation of a common idiom or pattern found in view development.

See Class-based views.

model

Models store your application’s data.

See Models.

MTV

“Model-template-view”; a software pattern, similar in style to MVC, but a better description of the way Django does things.

See the FAQ entry.

MVC

Model-view-controller; a software pattern. Django follows MVC to some extent.

project

A Python package – i.e. a directory of code – that contains all the settings for an instance of Django. This would include database configuration, Django-specific options and application-specific settings.

property

Also known as “managed attributes”, and a feature of Python since version 2.2. This is a neat way to implement attributes whose usage resembles attribute access, but whose implementation uses method calls.

See property.

queryset

An object representing some set of rows to be fetched from the database.

See Making queries.

slug

A short label for something, containing only letters, numbers, underscores or hyphens. They’re generally used in URLs. For example, in a typical blog entry URL:

https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2008/apr/12/spring/

the last bit (spring) is the slug.

template

A chunk of text that acts as formatting for representing data. A template helps to abstract the presentation of data from the data itself.

See Templates.

view

A function responsible for rendering a page.