This series of Django releases was supported from 2015-12-01 to 2017-04-04.

Release Highlights

• Password validation framework
• The Django admin got a facelift to it’s design
• Ability to run tests in parallel
• Mixins for Class Based Views, like LoginRequiredMixin for example

Upgrade Gotchas

• Multiple features deprecated in 1.7 were removed in 1.9, so a number of imports will change. This includes many modules from:

  • django.utils.*
  • Many django.*.util modules that provided backwards compatibility
  • One key example is the TestCase class moving from django.utils.unittest to django.test.

• django.core.cache.get_cache replaced by django.core.cache.caches

• If a model is defined outside of an application in INSTALLED_APPS, it must declare which app it belongs to via an app_label value. One common scenario is in tests, but there maybe others.

• If you’re upgrading from something older than this, you should upgrade to at least the next LTS release. It will have more security and bug fixes because of the extended support period.