Quick Django & Docker Starting Point

This instructions can be found here

A simple Django starting point using Docker containers for the App and DB

For this project to start we need some stuff before hand.

Contets

1. Need First

2. Download Containers and Install

1. Need First

For this to happend we need to:

Install homebrew. Once you have it, remember to insert the Homebrew directory at the top of your PATH environment variables by adding the following line at the botom of you ~./profile file

export PATH="/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin:$PATH"

Install Python using homebrew

$ brew install python

Check which version of Python you have, you could:

$ python --version
*Python 3.8.x # Success!*

Make sure you have pip installed, hopefully if you use homebrew for python installation, you'll have it already.

$ pip --version

Now we need Pipenv, this is a useful tool for development, to you create an isolated environment where you install all the packages for your project and not on the machine, you'll know which version you're using for an specific app, and, due to the use of Docker, it will be easy to deploy and work, so let's go and install Pipenv.

$ pip install --user pipenv

You'll find useful information in this page. We'll see next how to create and activate the environment.

Now we'll need Docker. Since I'm currently working on a Mac, I just download the Docker Desktop and I'm done, it already includes Docker and Docker Compose, If you are in Linux you'll have to install Docker and Docker Compose on two different steps, this link could help.

Since we are going to use a Postgres DB inside a container, it's not mandatory to download and install Postgres to your local machine, but it you want not to use the Docker container, you could read the documentation here and download using brew.

$ brew install postgres

This commands are handy:

### For MAC
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres start ## starts manually the postgres DB
pg_ctl -D /usr/local/var/postgres stop ## stops manually the postgres DB

### FOR LINUX
sudo service postgresql start ## start Postgres
sudo service postgresql stop ## stop Postgres

More info here

Now we are set!

2. Download Containers and Install

First clone the repo

$ git clone https://github.com/FernandoZnga/django-docker-postgres-start-up <my_project_name>
$ cd <my_project_name>

Check your local root folder, it should be like this

makefiles
    >database.mk
    >server.mk
.gitignore
Dockerfile
LICENCE
Makefile
README.md
requirements-dev.txt
requirements.txx

Before going any further, let me quick-explain your root folder.

makefiles folder contain some commands you could use just typing make <command> you could find the list of commands on the Makefile, just do a quick read.
Dockerfile as the name suggest, is for Docker and it tells which folders are going to be copied and sync from local to container.
docker-compose.yml tells Docker what how many containers we are going to use and what images.
_config.yml is just a theme for this README.md, you can delete it if you want to.
requirements-dev.txt contains the list of packages you could use while you are developing the app.
requirements.txt contains the list of packages you'll be using for production.

As you can see, at the moment, requirements-dev.txt is empty and it only purpose is to redirects the installation of packages to requirements.txt

At this poing you have all you need to download and install, so Let's Start!

Let's create and activate a virutal envinroment:

python -m venv env
source env/bin/activate

You'll se the word (env) in your command line.

Then create a .env empty file, then run the sudo docker-compose command.

$ touch .env  ## creates the .env empty file
$ sudo docker-compose run web django-admin startproject myapp .  ## myapp can be changed to your app name

It will download the images, create the containers and install dependencies, basically Django & psycopg2, then creates the project.

After that, you'll se a bunch of new folders, try to start the app running this from the root folder (where Makefile is):

$ make start

You should see the server running on your localhost

If you want to go beyond, I'll encourage you to follow Writing your first Django app tutorial.

Happy Coding!