djangotut

This is a site built to learn to use Django. I started with a cookiecutter django template and added the blog functionality. I also added social media account integration.

* EVERYTHING BELOW THIS LINE IS LEFT FOR FUTURE REFERENCE*

LICENSE: BSD

Settings

djangotut relies extensively on environment settings which will not work with Apache/mod_wsgi setups. It has been deployed successfully with both Gunicorn/Nginx and even uWSGI/Nginx.

For configuration purposes, the following table maps the 'djangotut' environment variables to their Django setting:

Environment Variable	Django Setting	Development Default	Production Default
DJANGO_CACHES	CACHES (default)	locmem	memcached
DJANGO_DATABASES	DATABASES (default)	See code	See code
DJANGO_DEBUG	DEBUG	True	False
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY	SECRET_KEY	CHANGEME!!!	raises error
DJANGO_SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER	SECURE_BROWSER_XSS_FILTER	n/a	True
DJANGO_SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT	SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT	n/a	True
DJANGO_SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF	SECURE_CONTENT_TYPE_NOSNIFF	n/a	True
DJANGO_SECURE_FRAME_DENY	SECURE_FRAME_DENY	n/a	True
DJANGO_SECURE_HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS	HSTS_INCLUDE_SUBDOMAINS	n/a	True
DJANGO_SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY	SESSION_COOKIE_HTTPONLY	n/a	True
DJANGO_SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE	SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE	n/a	False
DJANGO_DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL	DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL	n/a	"djangotut <noreply@zefr.com>"
DJANGO_SERVER_EMAIL	SERVER_EMAIL	n/a	"djangotut <noreply@zefr.com>"
DJANGO_EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX	EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX	n/a	"[djangotut] "

The following table lists settings and their defaults for third-party applications:

Environment Variable	Django Setting	Development Default	Production Default
DJANGO_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID	n/a	raises error
DJANGO_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY	n/a	raises error
DJANGO_AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME	AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME	n/a	raises error
DJANGO_MAILGUN_API_KEY	MAILGUN_ACCESS_KEY	n/a	raises error
DJANGO_MAILGUN_SERVER_NAME	MAILGUN_SERVER_NAME	n/a	raises error

Getting up and running

Basics

The steps below will get you up and running with a local development environment. We assume you have the following installed:

• pip
• virtualenv
• PostgreSQL

First make sure to create and activate a virtualenv, then open a terminal at the project root and install the requirements for local development:

$ pip install -r requirements/local.txt

Create a local PostgreSQL database:

$ createdb django_beginnings

Run migrate on your new database:

$ python manage.py migrate

You can now run the runserver_plus command:

$ python manage.py runserver_plus

Open up your browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ to see the site running locally.

Setting Up Your Users

To create a normal user account, just go to Sign Up and fill out the form. Once you submit it, you'll see a "Verify Your E-mail Address" page. Go to your console to see a simulated email verification message. Copy the link into your browser. Now the user's email should be verified and ready to go.

To create an superuser account, use this command:

$ python manage.py createsuperuser

For convenience, you can keep your normal user logged in on Chrome and your superuser logged in on Firefox (or similar), so that you can see how the site behaves for both kinds of users.

Live reloading and Sass CSS compilation

If you'd like to take advantage of live reloading and Sass / Compass CSS compilation you can do so with the included Grunt task.

Make sure that nodejs is installed. Then in the project root run:

$ npm install grunt

Now you just need:

$ grunt serve

The base app will now run as it would with the usual manage.py runserver but with live reloading and Sass compilation enabled.

To get live reloading to work you'll probably need to install an appropriate browser extension

It's time to write the code!!!

Deployment

It is possible to deploy to Heroku or to your own server by using Dokku, an open source Heroku clone.

Heroku

Run these commands to deploy the project to Heroku:

heroku create --buildpack https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-python

heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:dev
heroku pg:backups schedule DATABASE_URL
heroku pg:promote DATABASE_URL

heroku addons:create mailgun
heroku addons:create memcachier:dev

heroku config:set DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=RANDOM_SECRET_KEY_HERE
heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE='config.settings.production'

heroku config:set DJANGO_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YOUR_AWS_ID_HERE
heroku config:set DJANGO_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE
heroku config:set DJANGO_AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=YOUR_AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME_HERE

heroku config:set DJANGO_MAILGUN_SERVER_NAME=YOUR_MALGUN_SERVER

git push heroku master
heroku run python manage.py migrate
heroku run python manage.py check --deploy
heroku run python manage.py createsuperuser
heroku open

Dokku

You need to make sure you have a server running Dokku with at least 1GB of RAM. Backing services are added just like in Heroku however you must ensure you have the relevant Dokku plugins installed.

cd /var/lib/dokku/plugins
git clone https://github.com/rlaneve/dokku-link.git link
git clone https://github.com/jezdez/dokku-memcached-plugin memcached
git clone https://github.com/jezdez/dokku-postgres-plugin postgres
dokku plugins-install

You can specify the buildpack you wish to use by creating a file name .env containing the following.

export BUILDPACK_URL=<repository>

You can then deploy by running the following commands.

git remote add dokku dokku@yourservername.com:django_beginnings
git push dokku master
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku memcached:create django_beginnings-memcached
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku memcached:link django_beginnings-memcached django_beginnings
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku postgres:create django_beginnings-postgres
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku postgres:link django_beginnings-postgres django_beginnings
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=RANDOM_SECRET_KEY_HERE
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE='config.settings.production'
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=YOUR_AWS_ID_HERE
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=YOUR_AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY_HERE
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=YOUR_AWS_S3_BUCKET_NAME_HERE
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_MAILGUN_API_KEY=YOUR_MAILGUN_API_KEY
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku config:set django_beginnings DJANGO_MAILGUN_SERVER_NAME=YOUR_MAILGUN_SERVER
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku run django_beginnings python manage.py migrate
ssh -t dokku@yourservername.com dokku run django_beginnings python manage.py createsuperuser

When deploying via Dokku make sure you backup your database in some fashion as it is NOT done automatically.