Integrated solution Django + Bitrix24 for a long-term business project from Avivi. Bonus — Telegram bot

At the beginning of every IT project, every owner has to decide the question: which technology stack will be used to create the final product? And it is catastrophically bad if such a question does not arise, or the decision comes spontaneously, without a detailed study of the capabilities of programming languages and frameworks, or on the advice of someone who also does not understand this. Fortunately, Avivi has been working with large projects since 2007 and now we are ready to argue the benefits of our offer, namely the Django stack and Bitrix24.

Why two technologies at once?

The answer to this question requires the answer to another: will your future site work with customers? That is, will the visitors who will make purchases on the site, log in to their own account, communicate with the technical support service, or at all be able to perform any specific actions, except for the banal viewing of content? If the answer is "yes", then everything immediately falls into place — in addition to a good appearance, you will need functionality for working with clients. That is, the part of the IT project that is invisible to visitors, where all business processes of your company take place and information from end customers is processed. In other words, you need a CRM and creating your own nowadays is simply not economically feasible.

Therefore, the second in our technology stack is Bitrix24 on-premise — a perfect product that consists of hundreds of ready-made business tools and meets all the possible needs of modern business. In addition to CRM, you also get an ERP system into which you can transfer all the company's work and forget about auxiliary IT solutions, such as a shared working environment, a chat service for internal communication, joint work with documents and much more. We in Aviv wrote a lot about Bitrix24, since we have been working with this product since 2012. But now the main thing is to understand the need for Bitrix24 for the future project:

• Solves all needs for interaction with site visitors or application users;

• Is an independent, ready-made and optimized product with its own support, constant improvements and updates of the product;

• On-premise editing allows you to create your own customizations, scaling and integration with other platforms;

• Bitrix24 has a very attractive price compared to the features. In any case, it is many times cheaper than implementing this part of the functionality custom.

If at this stage you need more information about Bitrix24, leave a request for Avivi managers and get a free consultation with a product demo in the near future 

Why Django?

So now that we have answered the question of the number of technologies in the stack, let's move on to justifying the advantages of the first of them. Django, a free framework for developing web applications in one of the world's most popular programming languages, Python, is rightly considered by Avivi experts to be the best for implementing long-term projects. By the way, the technology got its name not from the character of the movie "Django Unchained" or even from the name of the Mandalorian Jango Fett, but from the Django pseudonym of the French jazz guitarist-virtuoso Jean Reinhardt.

Despite the rapid development of technologies, Python was, is, and for a long time will remain the best choice for especially long-term projects. This is important to emphasize, because at the time of choosing a technology, you hardly assume that your project will cease to exist in 2-3 years. Even so, though, Python has its advantages, as the programming language is easier than most, so it takes less time to program and can attract a large number of developers.

A significant feature of Django is the strict requirements for writing code. It has its own programming pattern that keeps developers within certain limits and prohibits them from doing their work carelessly. But beauty is not the main thing here:

• Structured code is understandable to any Python developer, which allows for technical support or refinement by various specialists at any time (for example, Node.js code turns into chaos over time);

• A Python project is easier to scale or modify;

• Strict rules contribute to the clear reproduction of a well-thought-out and defined structure of a large project, where precision and phased implementation are required.

Mutual integration

Each technology has its own advantages and capabilities. But it is important that they work together as effectively as they do alone. The combination of Django and Bitrix24 shows excellent results, which both Avivi developers and our clients, for whom we implemented projects with this technology stack, have already managed to make sure.

To understand the possibility of integrations, it is worth explaining how this process occurs. In the work of software, there is such a concept as "event" — in simple words, it is any change that occurs under the influence of internal or external factors. For example, a change in the status of an agreement, a user's click on a certain button, a notification received from a payment system or messenger — these are all events. Each platform already has a huge list of ready-made events, but nothing prevents developers from creating new ones or customizing existing ones.

Then it's about the API. With their help, any event can be transferred from one platform to another. That is, as a summary, we can say: full two-way integration is possible between Django and Bitrix24 on-premise. The use of the REST API — a library of ready-made and configured methods that operate according to the "take and use" rule — greatly simplifies the development and correctness of work. Thanks to REST, Bitrix24 quickly gained popularity among developers and users. Python, in turn, also has an extensive library of ready-made methods that allow you to implement any integration. And the data exchange process is simplified many times due to the use of the OAuth 2.0 standard, which is also used by a large number of services, such as Google, Instagram, Facebook and others.

Security and performance

Unlike other programming languages, Python is not based on asynchronous programming.

The latest version 3.0 has a built-in interpreter that first compiles the script's source text into bytecode. Python translates each instruction in the script source code to a group of bytecode instructions to increase program execution speed, as bytecode executes much faster. It is worth adding that Python is executed in its own PVM environment, which in turn provides the opportunity to run code scripts on any distributions of the Linux family and on Windows. Python is not owned by any company and is open source that anyone can modify, making it popular in the open source and community for motivated developers who want more. It is not surprising that Linux distributions have had a pre-installed interpreter for this language in the system for a long time. This approach is considered more qualitative and safe, relative to the possibility of external intervention. That is why Python is chosen for the development of large projects where data security is critical. It should be added that if you need to use an asynchronous function, it is also possible in Python, but with minimal customization.

Using only one data stream affects data download speed. Yes, it can be smaller than, for example, the same Node.js, but this is only by the standards of computers, not users. To the people who are the end users of your product, the difference is completely imperceptible. However, the performance of Python will be higher than that of most other programming languages. That is why it is for projects that require complex calculations.

Regarding Bitrix24 on-premise security, the theme is almost the hallmark of this product. Therefore, we will present the most important theses:

• On-premise editing is deployed on your server, which you can protect in any way and even better than the Pentagon server;

• Even in case of unauthorized access, the system uses data encryption, which makes it difficult for attackers to plan;

• For ordinary users, two-factor authentication is in effect, and inside the system there are enhanced security rules and access rights are configured;

• It is always possible to create custom conditions to increase the level of security, for example as an additional factor of the ip address, implemented by the Avivi team on the project The Preservation of Security with Bitrix24 .

The performance of Bitrix24 mostly depends on the capacity of your server and the optimization of the product. The on-premise edition is designed for use by all forms of business: from small businesses to multinational corporations (tariffs differ only in the number of users and their management). Therefore, you can be sure that Bitrix24 will not cause you extra trouble in terms of performance.

Additional offer: Telegram bot

Every business wants to be closer to customers: this is not only a good tone in treating the people who bring you money, but also an additional opportunity to get more profit. To this end, IT projects are reinforced with various mobile applications that duplicate the website's capabilities or provide unique benefits to users. However, each mobile application is an additional expense that can sometimes exceed the budget of the entire project. For example, not all customers have the same gadgets, which means that you should develop applications for iOS and Android, the application requires support, updating and constant refinement in case of business scaling.

Therefore, Avivi offers an excellent alternative, the essence of which consists in delegating a significant number of problems to a third-party service, or rather, Telegram. This is also a unique opportunity that using Django gives us.

The popular Telegram platform is famous for the ability to develop chatbots and their integration thanks to the Telegram Bot API. Almost any option on the website can be transferred to a chatbot: making a purchase, contacting support, viewing the status of a deal or delivery, and much more. Since the backend of the entire solution is developed in Python, it is quite simple to build another integration with Telegram, which, in fact, gives service users the same opportunities as site visitors. You can clearly see an example of such a solution in the article " Development of a Telegram bot that duplicates the tools of the personal account of customers on the website " of our blog.

Let's finalize

Avivi offers its customers only the best, so today we have presented you with an effective model for the development of a large IT project. The visual user part is created on Django, Python is responsible for the backend of the solution, Bitrix24 is responsible for working with clients and business processes, and the Telegram bot enhances the commercial effect of the entire project. We guarantee the reliability of such a solution and are ready to confirm our words with examples of similar projects completed for clients from all over the world. The offer is cost-effective and scalable at any stage of your business development. Avivi managers are ready to answer all your questions and consider offers. So now it's your turn!