django-kickstart

An attempt to create a private django based kickstart, please view this as "learn by doing" exercise rather than a viable option for anyone other than me. This project includes my favorite django modules making it my ideal starting point for elaborate web application projects.

Goal

Build a solid starting point for new, sizable, web projects with proven components, correctly configured and aligned to work well together.

• Excellent development setup which handles all the debugging, profiling and exception handling needs
• User management, registration and authentication from local or social sources
• Modern architecture providing advanced solution building capabilities
• Nginx + uwsgi config as fat-free delivery recipe

Major Components/Servers

• Django 1.4+
• Redis - Site and session caching as well as message queue (RabbitMQ if huge/high availability messaging)
• Solr - Advanced search
• Sentry - Great exception logging
• Node.js - Fan data out to all the connected clients from Redis messages sent by django apps
• Posttgres - or any database of choice

Included Django packages

• docutils - just to get the django documentation working

• django-crispy-forms - for better form handling and twitter-bootstrap compatibility

  • https://github.com/maraujop/django-crispy-forms
  • http://django-crispy-forms.readthedocs.org/en/d-0/install.html#installing-django-crispy-forms

• django-tastypie - for all the REST API goodies

  • https://github.com/toastdriven/django-tastypie

• django-grapelli - Seem to be back on track with their fine admin UI enhancement

  • https://github.com/sehmaschine/django-grappelli
  • http://django-grappelli.readthedocs.org/en/2.4.2/index.html

• django-filebrowser - for admin filebrowsing in grappelli

  • https://github.com/sehmaschine/django-filebrowser
  • http://django-filebrowser.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

• django-devserver - for complete debugging

  • https://github.com/dcramer/django-devserver
  • Reccomended packages:
    • pip install sqlparse
    • pip install werkzeug
    • pip install guppy #Not working correctly on my ubuntu 12.04 system (not looked into it)
    • pip install line_profiler

• django-debug-toolbar - for some in-page-debugging

  • https://github.com/dcramer/django-debug-toolbar

• django-extensions - admin utilities (and model documentation tools)

  • http://packages.python.org/django-extensions

  • apt-get install libgraphviz-dev

  • pip install pygraphviz

• django-compressor - Compression of CSS, LESS and js for fastest delivery

  • http://django_compressor.readthedocs.org/en/latest/

• django-waffle - feature flipping is nice to have when moving fast

  • https://github.com/jsocol/django-waffle
  • http://waffle.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html

• SQLAlchemy - optional ORM for heavy lifting

• raven - Sentry client for better exception logging

  • pip install raven
  • https://www.getsentry.com/docs/python/django/

• easy-thumbnails - Thumbnail creation and management (selected because of userena compatability)

  • https://github.com/sorl/sorl-thumbnail
  • http://easy-thumbnails.readthedocs.org

• django-appconf - Simple app configuration framework

  • http://django-appconf.readthedocs.org
  • https://github.com/jezdez/django-appconf/

• requests - HTTP communications library

  • pip install requests

• lxml - xml manipulation

  • pip install lxml

• django-userena - Usermanagement

  • https://github.com/bread-and-pepper/django-userena/
  • http://docs.django-userena.org/en/latest/index.html
  • Installs: django-guardian (fine grained access control)
  • (django-userena customized templates to use bootstrap with crispy forms)

• django-redis

  • https://github.com/niwibe/django-redis

• django-redis-sessions -

  • https://github.com/martinrusev/django-redis-sessions

• dogpile.cache

  • https://bitbucket.org/zzzeek/dogpile.cache
  • http://dogpilecache.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html

• dogslow - Performance watchdog

  • https://bitbucket.org/evzijst/dogslow
  • http://pypi.python.org/pypi/dogslow

• django-celery - deferred/scheduled tasks

  • http://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-celery
  • Installs: kombu, anyjson, amqplib, billiard

• kombu - Messaging framework (AMQP/Redis client +more)

  • http://kombu.readthedocs.org/en/latest/index.html

Handy information

Redis

Nodejs

# apt-get install build-essential g++ libssl-dev curl git
# apt-get install python-software-properties
# apt-add-repository ppa:chris-lea/node.js
# apt-get update
# apt-get install nodejs npm
npm install socket.io
npm install redis

view fan.js in the project root and the socket.io code in the script_footer.html template

PIL

Python imaging library needs to be built on Ubuntu 12.04 64bit and it's messy Here are the essentials (Paths may vary depending on architecture etc.)

# apt-get install python-dev
# apt-get install libjpeg8 libpng12-0 libfreetype6 zlib1g
# apt-get install python-imaging
# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so /usr/lib
# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libfreetype.so /usr/lib
# ln -s /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libz.so /usr/lib
pip install -U PIL

Postgresql

I like to use postgresql for development so this is something worth keeping handy (close but not this close)

Install at lease 9.2 (has some functionality I would like to explore)

# add-apt-repository ppa:pitti/postgresql
# apt-get update
# apt-get install postgresql-9.2

Configure postgresql for remote access (valid for ubunto and my network):

# su postgres

vim /etc/postgresql/9.2/main/postgresql.conf
* listen_addresses = '*'

vim /etc/postgresql/9.2/main/pg_hba.conf
host all all 192.168.1.0/24 trust

/etc/init.d/postgresql restart