I bought The Definitive Guide to Django: Web Development Done Right due to a course at my university. I was supposed to make a RESTful web-application, and I figured using Django would probably be a good idea since Django in itself is very RESTful.

Unfortunately the book is released for the 0.96 version of Django, and the current is 1.0. As such, a lot of the examples in the book do not work. Luckily the book is available online, and users have supplied readers like me with comments making the examples from the book work.

I'm glad I bought the book, I really want to support the authors, but I'm slightly annoyed that the printed book in all regards is useless and I have to be tied to the online version to make it work (makes it hard to work from my café!).

If you are considering this book: Wait for an updated version, and stick with the online version for now.

The book gives you a really nice overview of how the framework works. It's really an easy-reading book, and it also has really nice examples that shows exactly what you need to know, and a complete appendix with all the important things.
The only bad thing about this book is that it covers an old version of Django. If you use the most recent versions, you'll find yourself doing a lot of research on internet trying to make things on the examples work (some parameters names changed, the way you say a model needs to be at Admin interface changed, and some other things).

If you decide to use a previous version of Django, though, that's the book you should buy.

A great started for an an excellent MVC. I would recommend this book for anyone wanting to quickly assemble a website. If anything it's the python version of Ruby on Rails.

The book makes it easy to take a project from idea to concept to reality quickly.

The only issue that I have with the book is the implementation with existing or legacy web servers. The book seemed to lack procedure beyond "the norm". The procedure for Apache was very cookie cutter and did not meet the needs that I had. It honestly didn't work with any install of Apache, but mine was a specific install. Some research into the area before hand would be more beneficial.

I've dabbled with what I consider to be all the major web frameworks: TurboGears, Pylons, Rails, and Django. Religion and other biases aside, what really made me finally settle on Django was the documentation (though community/all-in-one-ness/robustness aspects are also nice factors). What's notable out about Django documentation? Precision, attention to detail, comprehensiveness, and general emphasis on polish.

To many people, a book is what makes a new technology both accessible and credible. A couple years ago when I thought TurboGears was the framework I wanted, I got the book, and it was crap. Subsequently, other things about the framework started to feel lacking. Then with Pylons, there is no book, which reflects the constant state of flux of the component mix. Cool framework, admirable ideals, but no book. Now with Django, there is *the* book, and it's beautifully done, and you discover that the framework is, too.

I see this book as a true community resource. Its examples directly extend *the* tutorial. Being available in its up-to-date entirety as a living document, anyone can simply answer a question by consulting a link to a book section. I applaud the authors opening this book up to be accessible to everyone, both in ease of reading, and in being free for download. It is always reassuring to find a book about a tool being written by the authors of a tool, and that should contribute to making it the canonical Django resource.

Even though I'm not a real world user of Django (I'm a Grails guy), I thought I'd give this book a try as Django is in the same category of web development frameworks as Grails. After reading this book, I had a solid foundation knowledge about how Django works and principles behind it. And it is well written. I would recommend it for any serious real world user of this framework.