Python app to django web app

Question

I've written some python code to accomplish a task. Currently, there are 4-5 classes that I'm storing in separate files. I'd now like to change this whole thing into a database-backed web app. I've been reading tutorials on Django, and so far I get the impression that I'll need to manually specify the fields and their types for every "model" that I use. This is a little surprising to me, since I was expecting some kind of ORM capability that would just take the existing classes I've already defined, and map them onto a database somehow, in a manner abstracted away from me.

Is this not the case? Am I missing something? It looks like I need to specify all the fields and types in the file 'models.py'.

Okay, now beyond those specifics, does anyone have any general tips on the best way to migrate an object-oriented desktop application to a web application?

Thanks!

Answer 1

That is Django's ORM: it maps classes to tables. What else did you expect? There needs to be some way of specifying what the fields are, though, before you can use them, and that's managed through the models.Model class and the various models.Field subclasses. You can certainly use your classes as mixins in order to use the existing business logic on top of the field definitions.