The author's approach is to talk the
reader through building one example web app of moderate complexity
from start to finish, demonstrating the best practices of testing and
debugging along the way. The demo app developed in the book is
realistically complex including custom template tags, external
libraries a race condition and bumping into a bug in the Django
source. Each portion of the app is tested and/or debugged,
introducing Django tools like Django's unit test extensions and test
runners, as well as third party tools like Twill and the Django Debug
Toolbar. The discussion of using the Python debugger (pdb) to step
through code running on the web server particularly helpful and
interesting. The book finishes with discussions of how to be
efficient when seeking help from the Django community, deploying and
debugging in the production environment and finally load testing the
production app.
The physical quality of the book seems above average. The paper is of a nice weight and so far this reviewer's copy has not separated from the binding. It's easy to distinguish the code samples from the command line output from the core text because of the use of different font style and weight. Each chapter includes a short introduction a the beginning and a helpful summary of what it covered at the end. The table of contents is good. The index is fair, if a little on the light side. The overall quality of the book is quite good.