Python

Mixins in Django

Mixins are a feature built into Django 1.6 and later that allows you to separate repeated code so that it can be inherited by other classes (subclasses). You might use mixins as a way of organizing your app so you don’t have to write the same view logic for multiple different models or to reduce duplication across many views. Mixins can also be used for global utility functions, like parsing dates, performing JSON serialization and deserialization, or validating forms. You can learn more about Python and Django framework from the Python Django developer training in Kochi and build your booming career in Full Stack development.

The key thing to understand about mixins is that they are designed for code reuse, not for extending functionality. If you want to add functionality to a class, you should use inheritance.

Mixins vs Inheritance

Mixins and inheritance both allow code reuse, but they solve the problem in different ways. To understand the difference between the two, take this example: you have a blog and you want to create an Article model. This Article model will have a title, body and, timestamp – all of which are fields that every model should have. Because each model has these three fields, you have to duplicate the code for them in each of your models, which is a maintenance and codebase problem.

To fix this problem, you can use mixins. To do so, you create a new file that contains the field definitions for all your models. That way, every model will automatically inherit from this field definition and will have those three fields.

Now take the same example but this time you’re going to use inheritance instead of mixins. This time, instead of putting those three fields in just one file that all models inherit from you put them in their files. You then create a new model that extends the same base class that all your models extend, but in this case, you don’t give it any additional fields.

In this example of inheritance, the base class inherits from one parent class and creates an instance of the base class when you create a new instance of that model. The first time your code runs in this new app, it will create an instance of Article. This is different from what happens when you use Django’s built-in inheritance system. Advanced knowledge in Programming language comes from extensive practice sessions. Let’s choose the best python training in Kochi for building a successful career in Python full stack development.

Author: STEPS