Django

Deployment on a Debian Server

This section was tested on Debian 9 (stretch) with Django 2.2.

Create virtual env and install Django

For the rest of this section, we assume that the virtual env is located at /var/www/myvenv and the django project is located at /var/www/mysite. All these files should be owned by root.

Deactive Debug Mode

mysite/mysite/settings.py:

DEBUG = False

Add domain to allowed hosts

mysite/mysite/settings.py:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = [ '<domain>' ]

Configure database

For installation und initialization see MariaDB.

To configure the database for django edit mysite/mysite/settings.py:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {       
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': '<database>',
         'USER': '<djangoDatabaseUser>',
         'PASSWORD': '<djangoDatabaseUserPassword>',
         'HOST': 'localhost',
         'PORT': '',
         'OPTIONS': {
             'init_command': "SET sql_mode='STRICT_TRANS_TABLES'",
         },
    }
}

To initialize the database, we first need the install gcc:

apt install build-essentiall

Afterwards we install a database client and initilize the database via (in the virtual env):

pip install mysqlclient
python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py createsuperuser

Configure static files

To configure the path for static files add to mysite/mysite/settings.py:

STATIC_ROOT = '/var/www/mysite/static/'

and let django collect the necessary static files from the django installation via (in the virtual env):

python manage.py collectstatic

Setup Apache configuration

We need WSGI, so

apt install libapache2-mod-wsgi libapache2-mod-wsgi-py3

Use the default SSL configuration for apache, see Apache.

Edit the configuration as follows. Add the configuration for WSGI, edit the directory configuration and add the configuration for static files:

WSGIDaemonProcess <domain> processes=2 threads=15 display-name=%{GROUP} python-home=/var/www/myvenv python-path=/var/www/mysite
WSGIProcessGroup <domain>
WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/mysite/mysite/wsgi.py
<Directory /var/www/mysite>
  Require all granted
</Directory>
Alias /static/ /var/www/mysite/static/