This is a starter repository to be used to set up the series of marketplace assignments on the www.dj4e.com web site.

There is a video walkthrough of these instructions at Installing the initial version of DJ4E Marketplace from github.

NOTE: As of January 2026, PythonAnywhere removed MySQL from their free accounts used for this course. As such we will use SQLite for the marketplace series of applications. If you started with MySQL using a pre-January 2026 PythonAnywhere account you can continue to use MySQL.

In order to keep this application working across multiple versions of Django, the default branch of this repository is django52. In the future this will allow the repository to simultaneously support multiple versions of Django more easily.

If you are installing this in the middle of taking the DJ4E course, you should already have a virtual environment set up in your bash console and in your web tab. Open a bash console and it should look like this:

(.ve52) 14:15 ~ $

If you do not have have a Django 5.2 virtual envronment set up, please see the Django 5.2 install instructions at www.dj4e.com.

With a properly configured virtual environment in place, checkout this repository:

cd ~/django_projects  
git clone https://github.com/csev/dj4e-market.git market
cd market
git checkout django52
python --version

The Python version for Django 5.2 should be at least 3.11. It will most likely be 3.12 or later. Once you verify your Python version is correct, run:

cd ~/django_projects/market
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install -r requirements52.txt
python -m django --version

Your Django version should be 5.2 or later. If you are on Django 4.x or 6.x this repository will likely not work. Check to see if there are other branches that match your version of Django.

You will notice that in this project, the project-wide settings.py and project-wide urls.py is in a folder called market/config not market/market. Many developers find it less confusing that using the project folder name as the project configuration folder name.

To make sure you have your dependencies have been installed correctly, run:

python manage.py check

Until you see output like:

python manage.py check
Using registration/login.html as the login template
System check identified no issues (0 silenced).

Important: If you get any kind of traceback, you need to stop and fix any errors before continuing. You should not continue with these instructions until python manage.py check runs without errors.

This project uses SQLite (db.sqlite3 in the project root). The database is configured in config/settings.py under DATABASES. No extra database setup is required on PythonAnywhere beyond the steps in "Initializing your Database".

If you are installing this to be submitted to the DJ4E autograder - make sure to launch the autograder and check if there are additional requirements like adding a particular adminstrator user or setting a code string for the autograder.

Once check works you will need to run your migrations and make a new administrator account. Again if you encounter any error in these commands stop and figure out the error before proceeding.

cd ~/django_projects/market
python manage.py makemigrations      # Probably will say "no changes"
python manage.py migrate

python manage.py createsuperuser

At this point you need to configure your PythonAnywhere Web application to point to the new project directory. Under the Web tab, update the config files to point to your new project:

Source code:                /home/--your-account--/django_projects/market
Working Directory:          /home/--your-account--/django_projects/market

Edit the WGSI configuration file under the Web tab, and replace it with the following:

import os
import sys

path = os.path.expanduser('~/django_projects/market')
if path not in sys.path:
    sys.path.insert(0, path)
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'config.settings'
from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application
from django.contrib.staticfiles.handlers import StaticFilesHandler
application = StaticFilesHandler(get_wsgi_application())

You can edit these files and settings in the Web tab to switch between your various projects on PythonAnywhere. Make sure to reload under the Web tab after every file or configuration change.

Once this is done reload your web application and navigate to your application.

In the market/config/settings.py there is a APP_NAME variable. Give your application a name other than the default of "Chuck's Marketplace". It does not have to be your name - just something other than the default.

Once this is done reload your web application and navigate to your application and verify the name in the top menu has changed.

As you go through all the assignments based on this starting code we will use the git version management at the end of each assignment so if things go badly, you can "go back in time" to a known good version and start over working on one assignment.

To use git you must first tell git who you are so that it can mark each of your changes. Run the following commands to configure git in your PythonAnywhere account:

cd ~/django_projects/market
git config --global user.email "youremail@example.com"
git config --global user.name "Your name"

Once your application starts and is running, you can enter a few URLs in your browser to check how much is working.

https://your-account.pythonanywhere.com/

Will should show a simple welcome page - we will replace this in a later assignment.

https://your-account.pythonanywhere.com/home

Will show the same simple welcome page - we will keep this throughout the series of assignments

https://your-account.pythonanywhere.com/favicon.ico

Will show a small "favicon" with "4E" and a blue background - you will replace this later

https://your-account.pythonanywhere.com/admin

Will allow you to log in and test your administrator account and password and show a few Django internal tables.

If you encounter problems with migrations or need to start with a fresh database, you can use the automated database reset script. This is particularly useful when you have made a series of changes to models.py and migration files become confused causing makemigrations to fail.

For detailed instructions on how to reset your database and migration files, see DB_RESET.md.

The reset script will:

• Drop all tables in your database
• Delete all migration files (except __init__.py)
• Allow you to start fresh with makemigrations and migrate