django-tenant-schemas

This application enables django powered websites to have multiple tenants via PostgreSQL row-level security. A vital feature for every Software-as-a-Service website.

Django provides currently no simple way to support multiple tenants using the same project instance, even when only the data is different. Because we don't want you running many copies of your project, you'll be able to have:

Multiple customers running on the same instance
Shared and Tenant-Specific data
Tenant View-Routing

Why row-level security and not schemas

There are typically three solutions for solving the multitenancy problem.

Isolated Approach: Separate Databases. Each tenant has it's own database.
Semi Isolated Approach: Shared Database, Separate Schemas. One database for all tenants, but one schema per tenant.
Shared Approach: Shared Database, Shared Schema. All tenants share the same database and schema. There is a main tenant-table, where all other tables have a foreign key pointing to.

This application implements the third approach, which in our opinion, represents the ideal compromise between simplicity and performance.

We have being using dts for years with great pain, as tenant base grew was nearly imposible to maintain, both due of the complexity of migrations wich can endure for hours and the lack of a suitable backup when you have hundred of thousands of tables, which can happen really fast when running a SaaS service as txerpa.com.

So we've decided to fork django-tenant-schemas to maintain its goals.

Simplicity: barely make any changes to your current code to support multitenancy. Plus, you only manage one database.
Performance: make use of shared connections, buffers and memory.

DTS is better suited if you plan to have less than a hundred (or so) tenants each one with tons of data. DTS is a great project that has been really usefull for us, we love the simplicity of its API and the level of isolation it granted to our project.

How it works

TODO

What can this app do?

As many tenants as you want

Each tenant has its data protected and database level with row-level security. Use a single project instance to serve as many as you want.

Tenant-specific and shared models

Tenant-specific apps do not share their data between tenants, but you can also have shared models where the information is always available and shared between all.

Tenant View-Routing

You can have different views for http://customer.example.com/ and http://example.com/, even though Django only uses the string after the host name to identify which view to serve.

Magic

Everyone loves magic! You'll be able to have all this barely having to change your code!

Setup & Documentation

This is just a short setup guide, it is strongly recommended that you read the complete version at django-tenant-schemas.readthedocs.io.

Your DATABASE_ENGINE setting needs to be changed to

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'tenant_schemas.postgresql_backend',
        # ..
    }
}

Add the middleware tenant_schemas.middleware.TenantMiddleware to the top of MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES, so that each request can be set to use the correct schema.

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES = (
    'tenant_schemas.middleware.TenantMiddleware',
    #...
)

Add tenant_schemas.routers.TenantSyncRouter to your DATABASE_ROUTERS setting, so that the correct apps can be synced, depending on what's being synced (shared or tenant).

DATABASE_ROUTERS = (
    'tenant_schemas.routers.TenantSyncRouter',
)

Add tenant_schemas to your INSTALLED_APPS.

Create your tenant model

from django.db import models
from tenant_schemas.models import TenantMixin

class Client(TenantMixin, models.Model):
    name = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    paid_until =  models.DateField()
    on_trial = models.BooleanField()
    created_on = models.DateField(auto_now_add=True)

Define on settings.py which model is your tenant model. Assuming you created Client inside an app named customers, your TENANT_MODEL should look like this:

TENANT_MODEL = "customers.Client" # app.Model

Now run migrate_schemas to sync your apps to the public schema.

python manage.py migrate_schemas --shared

Create your tenants just like a normal django model. Calling save will automatically create and sync/migrate the schema.

from customers.models import Client

# create your public tenant
tenant = Client(domain_url='tenant.my-domain.com',
                schema_name='tenant1',
                name='My First Tenant',
                paid_until='2014-12-05',
                on_trial=True)
tenant.save()

Any request made to tenant.my-domain.com will now automatically set your PostgreSQL's search_path to tenant1 and public, making shared apps available too. This means that any call to the methods filter, get, save, delete or any other function involving a database connection will now be done at the tenant's schema, so you shouldn't need to change anything at your views.

You're all set, but we have left key details outside of this short tutorial, such as creating the public tenant and configuring shared and tenant specific apps. Complete instructions can be found at django-tenant-schemas.readthedocs.io.

Logging

You can configure logging as normal django app, add new logger for tenant_schemas app to loggers section, something like this:

LOGGING = {
    # ...

    'loggers': {
        # ...

        'tenant_schemas': {
            'handlers': ['file'],
            'level': 'DEBUG',
        }
    }
}

Use handlers of your preference.

Jragon/django-tenants-rls