Making a GeoDjango App: Introduction & Overview

This is an exceptional course and a extremely professional approach to teaching. It’s obvious to me that Jackie has finely honed her college teaching experience and it shows throughout these videos. Her thought process is completely easy to follow and she doesn’t leave any gaps for the readers to Google the answers for themselves. She has also transposed many of her video words into written words for the readers to peruse. Maybe these will turn into a fully complete written tutorial. (hint) Excellent course!

Thank you so much for your feedback, Peter. Teaching is one of those professions where you’re always questioning and tweaking your approach/accuracy in a constantly changing field. It’s so nice to receive positive reinforcement, and I’m so grateful you took the time to submit your comments. I’m glad you found value in the videos, and to be fair, the course was loosely adapted from the article by the same name, written by Ahmed Bouchefra in December 2018: realpython.com/location-based-app-with-geodjango-tutorial/ While I did make quite a few changes, his article was the original inspiration. It’s so heartening to know my videos have been helpful. Your comment made my day/week/month…

Hi,

Question. I’m using Django for my online website (MySql) with Cpanel. So I don’t use Django on my personnal computer. I got different apps. I’d like to use it for userprofile model. How I can install GEOS GDAL and PROJ.4? Directly by the pip?

I’ve tried with GDAL and I got an error (pip install GDAL).

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/tmp/pip-build-hw2ao46r/GDAL/setup.py", line 257, in get_gdal_config
    return fetch_config(option)
  File "/tmp/pip-build-hw2ao46r/GDAL/setup.py", line 154, in fetch_config
    raise gdal_config_error(e)
gdal_config_error: [Errno 13] Permission denied: 'gdal-config'

Could not find gdal-config. Make sure you have installed the GDAL native library and development headers. 

Sorry for posting here button your buttons do not work on others chapters…

Help me to solve this error

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "manage.py", line 22, in <module>                                                                                            
    main()                                                                                                                          
  File "manage.py", line 18, in main                                                                                                
    execute_from_command_line(sys.argv)                                                                                             
  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\venv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 419, in execute_from_command_line
    utility.execute()                                                                                             
  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\venv\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\__init__.py", line 395, in execute
    django.setup()                                                                                                
  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\venv\lib\site-packages\django\__init__.py", line 24, in setup                   
    apps.populate(settings.INSTALLED_APPS)                                                                        
  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\venv\lib\site-packages\django\apps\registry.py", line 91, in populate           
    app_config = AppConfig.create(entry)                                                                          
  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\venv\lib\site-packages\django\apps\config.py", line 224, in create              
    import_module(entry)                                                                                          
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python36\lib\importlib\__init__.py", line 126, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 994, in _gcd_import
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 971, in _find_and_load
  File "<frozen importlib._bootstrap>", line 953, in _find_and_load_unlocked
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'shops'

@Narendrakumar Ratibhai Patel the error message ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'shops' indicates that Django cannot find the module shops specified in your INSTALLED_APPS setting.

Here are the steps you can take to resolve this issue:

Check INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py:

Ensure that shops is listed correctly in the INSTALLED_APPS in your settings.py file.

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'shops',
    ...
]

Verify the Directory Structure:

Make sure that there is a directory named shops in your project directory, and it contains an __init__.py file (this file can be empty). This marks the directory as a Python package.

Your project directory should look something like this:

geoshops/
    manage.py
    geoshops/
        __init__.py
        settings.py
        urls.py
        wsgi.py
    shops/
        __init__.py
        models.py
        views.py
        ...

Check for Typos:

Ensure that there are no typos in the name of the directory or the module in the INSTALLED_APPS.

Virtual Environment:

Ensure that you are using the correct virtual environment where you installed your project dependencies. Activate your virtual environment and then run your Django project:

$ source venv/bin/activate  # On Windows, use venv\Scripts\activate

Check for Python Path Issues:

Sometimes, Python path issues can cause this error. You can try to run the following command to see if Python recognizes the module:

(venv) $ python -m shops

If this command throws an error, it means that Python is not able to find the shops module in your current environment.

If you have verified all the above and the issue persists, please share more details about your project structure or any recent changes you made that might have caused this issue.

Thanks for your kind reply. I have gone through all these setup as you mentioned earlier. But, no worries finally I found the solution and the solution is that I have add these two lines to set library path in settings.py

GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH = r’C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.24.1\bin\gdal304.dll’ GEOS_LIBRARY_PATH = r’C:\Program Files\QGIS 3.24.1\bin\geos_c.dll’

Hm, interesting. I’m glad you got it to work, but it seems unlikely that these missing settings were causing the ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'shops' error that you shared above.

Adding the GDAL_LIBRARY_PATH and GEOS_LIBRARY_PATH to your settings.py is typically related to resolving issues with the geographic libraries (GDAL and GEOS) in Django projects using GeoDjango. Django uses these settings to find the GDAL and GEOS libraries if they are not in a standard location.

Maybe you fixed something else as well on the way? Either way, I’m glad it’s working and congrats on figuring it out 🥳

Found error while migrating data from JSON file:

  File "D:\pythonProject\geoshops\nearbyshops\migrations\0002_auto_20240714_0830.py", line 15, in load_data
    objects = json.load(datafile)
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\json\__init__.py", line 293, in load
    return loads(fp.read(),
                 ^^^^^^^^^
  File "C:\Users\Admin\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python311\Lib\encodings\cp1252.py", line 23, in decode
    return codecs.charmap_decode(input,self.errors,decoding_table)[0]
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
UnicodeDecodeError: 'charmap' codec can't decode byte 0x8d in position 828: character maps to <undefined>

Solution is:

with open('path/to/your/file.json', 'r', encoding='utf-8') as f:

Add , 'r', encoding='utf-8', as shown above.

Great, thanks for sharing @Narendrakumar Ratibhai Patel!