Don't Touch That Dial! An Introduction to Channels

About This Tutorial

This tutorial will provide a hands-on guided introduction to using Channels in your Django web site to provide bi-directional communications and background processing. Topics will include common use-cases, specific functional and working code, and some implementation and integration details. There will also be some time spent discussing the general history of the internet and the technologies involved, providing the attendees with a deeper understanding of how and why we have gotten to this point.

Session Outline

1. An overview of TCP/IP and the HTTP protocol
   1. TCP Sockets
   2. HTTP Connections
2. The limitations of an HTTP Connection
   1. The tradeoffs of persistent vs intermittent connections
   2. Options for getting past those limits
3. How the Web is changing
   1. What the web used to be
   2. What the web is becoming
4. A web architecture
   1. NGINX
   2. uWSGI
   3. Django
   4. Redis
   5. Daphne
5. Testing techniques
6. Inter-Channel communication
7. Chat! The simplest Channels-based app
8. Security
   1. Encryption
   2. Authentication
   3. Authorization
9. Background processing
10. Asynchronous communications
11. The completed site

Attendees will not be required to provide their own installations. However, each attendee should have a system capable of accessing a host on the internet through SSH in order to participate in the exercises. Each attendee will be given access to a pre-configured virtual machine containing all the code and other materials used during the session. A reasonable degree of knowledge of common web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) will be assumed. The pages, templates, scripts, and resources will be provided - the attendees will not be creating them on their own. However, it may be difficult for an attendee to follow the discussion and examples if they don’t have any familiarity with those items. Attendees should also be reasonably comfortable with using a command-line interface and most of the common commands (e.g. ls, cp, mv, cd, diff, grep, vi or nano). Knowledge of git is helpful but not required. Again, the specific commands being used will be provided cookbook- style, but knowledge of what those commands are doing will enhance the experience and enable the attendee to explore the subject material beyond what will be presented.