55minutes/django-project-template

Django project template, based on the sample project layout from "Two Scoops of Django: Best Practices for Django 1.5"

django-project-template

An opinionated project template for Django 1.5.2 featuring:

• Proven project layout
• PostgreSQL
• Asset pipeline to preprocess, merge, minify, and cache bust your CSS, JavaScript, and images
• Livereload to automatically refresh your desktop and mobile browsers when you change your presentation related files
• Automatically regenerates ctags when any .py files change
• Optimized for development on OS X, but should work in most Linux environments as well
• Deploy to a DigitalOcean Ubuntu 12.04 droplet

Sounds good, how do I get started?

1. Make sure you have everything installed and working:

   • virtualenv
   • virtualenvwrapper
   • rvm or rbenv with ruby-2.0.0-p195
   • Node.js
   • PostgreSQL

2. Set up your Python virtual environment:

   mkdir icecream
   cd icecream
   mkvirtualenv -a `pwd` icecream-dev
   add2virtualenv `pwd`

3. Install Django:

   pip install django

4. Star a new project in your working directory:

   django-admin.py startproject \
     --template=https://github.com/55minutes/django-project-template/archive/master.zip \
     --extension=py,md,html --name=local_setup icecream .

5. Set up the development environment and start the Django development server:

   source bin/local_setup
   django-admin.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

6. Start Guard in another shell:

   guard

7. Point your browsers at http://localhost:8000 and you should see the sample template rendered.

8. When you make changes to anything in the following directories, your browsers should automatically refresh:

   • ice_cream/templates
   • ice_cream/static

Note: these instructions show creation of a project called "icecream". You should replace this name with the actual name of your project.

---

Dependencies

Most of the dependencies have been captured in the template itself. However, some of the dependencies require you to set up:

• Python: Yes, it comes with OS X, but please don't use the built-in Python to do your development. Instead, install Python from Homebrew. Be sure to familiarize yourself with how Python works with Homebrew.
• virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper: Python development environment. Just use pip to install these.
• rvm or rbenv with ruby-2.0.0-p195: Yes, Ruby in your Django project. We use Guard and its various plugins to perform tasks automatically when we edit files.
• Node.js: We use tools such as LESS and yUglify, which are Node.js packages.
• PostgreSQL: You should develop on the same DB as production. Also, you should use Homebrew for your PostgreSQL installation.

Create the working environment

Use virtualenvwrapper to take care of managing your virtual environments and adding the package path to site-packages for you:

mkdir icecream
cd icecream
mkvirtualenv -a `pwd` icecream-dev
add2virtualenv `pwd`

The working directory icecream is associated with the icecream-dev virtualenv, and is added to sys.path.

See the documentation for mkvirtualenv and add2virtualenv for more details.

Install Django

To install Django in the new virtual environment, run the following command:

pip install django

Create your project

To create a new Django project called "icecream" using django-project-template, run the following command:

django-admin.py startproject \
  --template=https://github.com/55minutes/django-project-template/archive/master.zip \
  --extension=py,md,html --name=local_setup icecream .

Set up the development environment

source bin/local_setup

We need to source the set up script in order to set the $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable.

You'll want to modify this script for your own needs. The supplied script is a starting point for bootstrapping the development environment of your specific project. The idea is that any developer should be able to check out your code, run this script, and be ready to go.

I try to do as little as possible in the script, delegating most of the heavy lifting to Fabric. If you're doing serious Django development, you'll want to learn Fabric.

Running the script out of the box will:

1. Install Python dependencies
2. Generate Django settings.py
3. Generate .ruby-gemset
4. Generate Guardfile
5. Generate postactivate and postdeactivate scripts for the virtualenv
6. Set $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE
7. Install Ruby dependencies
8. Install Node.js dependencies
9. Create the development database
10. Create the STATIC_ROOT directory

Acknowledgements

• Two Scoops of Django