Django Newspaper

Project description

This project is a basic newspaper platform, it is inspired to the django for beginners project whose repository is available at https://github.com/wsvincent/djangoforbeginners

Project configuration

In order to make it work the requisite are

mysql (mariadb)
python

Configure python environment

(optional) Configure a virtualenv before by installing python-virtualenv and executing the command:

virtualenv venv && source venv/bin/activate

To configure python environment simply launch

pip install -r requirements.txt

NOTE: if you get an error installing mysqlclient, try installing python-mysqlclient in the system, it will install required packages

Install and configure database

In order to interact with a mysql db, install mysql and create a db (edit configuration in django_project/prod-settings.py accordingly). For local development sqlite will be used.

First Start in Development

Nothing different from standard django development environment, makemigration/migrate to apply migration on a sqlite database and runserver to start

PRODUCTION

Before deployment in production, test must be run:

python manage.py test accounts articles pages

In order to deploy the project in production, first you have to generate and export DJANGO_SECRET environment variable, and also set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable to django_project/production_settings.py

In order to run a mysql docker instead of installing mysql on production site: docker run --rm --name django-db-test -e MYSQL_PASSWORD=password -e MYSQL_USER=django -e MYSQL_DATABASE=blog -e MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD='True' mysql where parameters are:

• MYSQL_DATABASE -> database name
• MYSQL_USER -> mysql user with all access to specified db
• MYSQL_PASSWORD -> mysql user password
• MYSQL_RANDOM_ROOT_PASSWORD -> with any value different from NULL it randomly creates a root user password (mandatory)

The first 3 are necessary in django settings too

Migrations must be generated, committed and migrated, i.e. let say that there are changes in pages application models, steps should be:

python makemigrations pages
git add pages/migrations
git commit -m "Pages application's migrations added"
git push
python manage.py migrate

These step could be automated BUT:

• you should not generate migrations without verifying that they works
• migrations should not be generated directly in production
• migrations should be generated and applied into a database identical in terms of tables and relation to the production one

Project must be run with uwsgi, in order to do that you have to implement uwsgi.ini.example, specifically chdir parameter, eventually pidfile and http

Then run the server with the command: uwsgi --ini uwsgi.ini

Complete documentation to uwsgi at https://uwsgi-docs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/WSGIquickstart.html

DEVOPS assignment

For the DevOps improvements of this project there is no need for change to the logic of the application; the application must be considered as a legacy application.

Hence, DevOps changes must concentrate on automation and enhancement of the application's maintainer experience, as shon during last seminar on the matter.

examples

WRONG enhancement:

Make dev and prod settings identical, that is, making so both development and production use the same database. It is a part of the project design making so that developer does not need a mysql server running.

RIGHT enhancement:

Create an environment variable that if set change the settings file to production_settings.py, which contains settings to work with mysql server, else it will backups on a sqlite instance.