Create Django News Website using Python News Api

In this tutorial, we will guide you through the process of creating a news app in Django from scratch. We’ll use the newsapi-python library to fetch news articles from an external source. By the end of this tutorial, you will have a basic news application that can display news articles on a web page.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following prerequisites:

Python and Django installed on your system
An API key from the News API (you can get a free key by signing up). Click on Get API Key and Sign Up.

Implementation

Step 1: Create a Django Project and App

Let’s start by creating a new Django project and app:

django-admin startproject newsapp_project
cd newsapp_project
python manage.py startapp newsapp

To fetch news data from the News API using the newsapi-python library. You’ll need to install this library using pip:

pip install newsapi-python

Step 2: Configure Django Settings

Open the settings.py file in your project directory and add 'newsapp' to the INSTALLED_APPS list:

pythonCopy code

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'newsapp',
]

Step 3: Create a Django Form

First, create a Django form to collect the user’s selection for country and category. In the newsapp/forms.py file, define your form:

# newsapp/forms.py
from django import forms

class NewsFilterForm(forms.Form):
    COUNTRIES = [
        ('us', 'United States'),
        ('gb', 'United Kingdom'),
        ('ca', 'Canada'),
        # Add more countries as needed
    ]

    CATEGORIES = [
        ('general', 'General'),
        ('business', 'Business'),
        ('health', 'Health'),
        # Add more categories as needed
    ]

    country = forms.ChoiceField(choices=COUNTRIES, label='Select Country')
    category = forms.ChoiceField(choices=CATEGORIES, label='Select Category')

Step 4: Create Django Views to Fetch Data from API

Now, let’s create views and templates to display the news artaicles on a web page. Define a view in newsapp/views.py:

from django.shortcuts import render
from newsapi import NewsApiClient
from .forms import NewsFilterForm

def news_list(request):
    api_key = 'YOUR_NEWS_API_KEY'  # Replace with your News API key
    newsapi = NewsApiClient(api_key=api_key)

    # Default values for country and category
    country = 'us'
    category = 'general'

    if request.method == 'GET':
        form = NewsFilterForm(request.GET)
        if form.is_valid():
            country = form.cleaned_data['country']
            category = form.cleaned_data['category']

    # Fetch news articles based on user selections
    articles = newsapi.get_top_headlines(country=country, category=category, page_size=10)

    return render(request, 'news_list.html', {'articles': articles['articles'], 'form': form})

Step 5: Create the Template

Create your template file newsapp/templates/news_list.html to include the form for selecting country and category:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
    <title>News App</title>
</head>
<body>
    <h1>Latest News</h1>
    
    <form method="get">
        {{ form.as_p }}
        <button type="submit">Filter</button>
    </form>
    
    <ul>
        {% for article in articles %}
        <li>
            <h2><a href="{{ article.url }}">{{ article.title }}</a></h2>
            <p>{{ article.description }}</p>
            <p>Published at: {{ article.publishedAt }}</p>
        </li>
        {% endfor %}
    </ul>
</body>
</html>

Here is html file with styling.

Step 6: Configure URLs

Keep the URL routing configuration in newsapp/urls.py as it is:

from django.urls import path
from . import views

urlpatterns = [
    path('', views.news_list, name='news_list'),
]

Include the app’s URLs in your project’s urls.py:

from django.contrib import admin
from django.urls import path, include

urlpatterns = [
    path('admin/', admin.site.urls),
    path('', include('newsapp.urls')),
]

Step 7: Run the Development Server

Run the Django development server:

python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser, and you should see a list of the latest news articles fetched from the News API and displayed directly on the web page.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you’ve learned how to create a basic news app in Django from scratch. You’ve set up a Django project, fetched news data from an external API, stored it in a database, and displayed it on a web page. From here, you can further enhance your news app by adding features like search, category filters, and user authentication This project serves as a solid foundation for building a more comprehensive news application

Find this project on Github.