Soft UI - Generate a Django Dashboard with ease

This article presents an easy way to generate a Django dashboard on top of Soft UI, a modern Bootstrap 5 design crafted by Creative-Tim. To achieve this goal we will use an open-source tool provided by AppSeed: Django Cookie-Cutter. During the process, we can choose the design (Soft UI) and also the database type from a short-list with popular engines: SQLite, MySql, or PostgreSQL.  

What's in the box? The generated product looks similar to this one:

Soft UI Django - product page (includes demo & sources)

To use this open-source generator a minimal programming kit should be installed in the workstation starting with Python3 and GIT:

• Python - the language used by the tool
• GIT - the popular command-line versioning tool
• A modern programming editor like Atom or VSCode

Once we have all the tools, we can proceed further and generate our simple Django Dashboard.

Step #1 - Install dependencies (cookie-cutter and GitPython)

$ pip install cookiecutter
$ pip install GitPython

CookieCutter is the Python library that makes all the work for us and GitPython is a nice and useful Python wrapper around Git used to pull the UI themes from Git.

Step #2 - Generate the dashboard using Soft UI design

$ cookiecutter https://github.com/app-generator/cookiecutter-django.git

Step #3 - Customize the project

Most of the commands provide a default value selectable by an ENTER. The most important step is the one when we choose the UI kit because the tool provides multiple choices regarding the design:

• (free) Django Soft UI - the design we will select
• (free) Django Volt - a modern dashboard with Bootstrap 5 design
• (free) Django Datta Able - open-source colorful dashboard

>>> # Project Name Option 
>>> project_name [Django Seed project]: Django Soft UI

>>> # Project Slug is the directory name
>>> project_slug [django_soft_ui]:

>>> # Project Description: saved in the README file 
>>> description [A simple Django project]: My Simple Django Project

>>> # Project Author: saved in the README file   
>>> author_name []: Bill Gates

>>> # Author Email: saved in the README file   
>>> email [bill@microsoft.com]:

>>> Project Version: saved in the README file
>>> version [0.0.1]:

>>> UI Kit: (Volt default option)
>>> Select theme:
1 - volt
2 - soft-ui                       <------ The magic option            
3 - datta-able

>>> Database: (SQLite default option) 
Select database:
1 - sqlite3
2 - mysql
3 - postgresql

>>> Database Credentials: Used to configure the connection
>>> database_name [appseed_django]: (use default)
>>> database_user [appseed_user]: (use default)
>>> database_pass [Pass1234]: (use default)

Once the process is finished, we can open the django_soft_ui directory using a programming editor like Atom or VsCode and follow the instruction provided by the README to compile the generated project.

Step #1 - Create a virtual environment  (used to install dependencies)

$ virtualenv env
$ source env/bin/activate

Step #2 - Install project dependencies

$ # Install modules
$ pip3 install -r requirements.txt

Step #3 - Set up the database

$ python manage.py makemigrations
$ python manage.py migrate

Step #4 - Start the generated Django project

$ # Start the application (development mode)
$ python manage.py runserver

By visiting the project in the browser we should see something similar to the original project: Soft UI Dashboard (demo link). Once we create a new user and Sign IN, the access to the private pages is unlocked.

Soft UI - VR Page

In the same way, we can build more Django projects but using different UI kits with less manual work. Regarding the Django Cookie-Cutter tool, the product has a nice roadmap where the publisher presents a few really nice features:

• New themes: CoreUI, AdminLTE (popular open-source templates)
• Deployment: AWS, Google Cloud, HEROKU, Docker
• Modules: Data tables, Charts, Stripe Payments

For more information please access the public repository of this tool and read more about it.

Thanks for reading! For more resources, please access:

• More Django Dashboards built with modern UI kits
• Open-source Admin Dashboards - index provided by AppSeed
• Free React Dashboards - a popular article published on Dev.to