Django Heroku Base App

A django heroku project template based on https://github.com/heroku/heroku-django-template enriched with the most needed django features and packages.

Prerequisites

Heroku Toolbelt and Login

Run this from your terminal (please ensure that you have Ruby installed):

wget -qO- https://toolbelt.heroku.com/install-ubuntu.sh | sh

heroku login

Install

Clone this project

git clone git@bitbucket.org:Dosdos/djangoheroku.git

Create your venv working environment: Pycharm > Settings > Project Interpreter > (Coil icon) > Create VirtualEnv
Set up grunt, install bower components and use grunt watch
- Move to etc folder
- Install grunt modules (make sure you have node.js and node package manager installed)
- Install bower components
- Launch grunt default: it will automatically compile every less file and js file, preen bower components and check for js errors thanks to jshint

cd etc
sudo npm install
bower install
grunt

Add ENV='prod' variable in heroku

heroku config:set ENV='prod'
Deploy app to heroku

Grunt watch

Launch grunt watch: it's a watcher that keeps listening and compiles less and compresses js file when a file is changed

grunt watch

Environmental Variables

Please note that to store env variable in local machine is necessary to add them to the venv activate file in order to use them while venv is running. Just add to activate file

export SECRET_KEY="here_the_diango_secret_key"

Deploy to Heroku

Set up remotes

First check the remotes of the project

git remote --v

If heroku is already among your git remotes, but it is not pointing to the right application, remove the heroku remote

git remote remove heroku

Add your heroku app to git remotes

heroku git:remote -a <app_name>

Deploy

Deploying your code to heroku is done through git

git push heroku master

Note: make sure your local master branch is always aligned with origin master. If not aligned, when pushing to heroku master, heroku blocks the push launching an error.

Database

If this was your first deploy we need to set up the db. Heroku allows to run commands through its toolbelt run command.

(Optional) Syncdb
```
heroku run python manage.py syncdb
```
Migrate
```
heroku run python manage.py migrate
```

(Optional) Create additional super user

heroku run python manage.py createsuperuser

Note: to review database coordinates and status use heroku pg command

Access heroku database from shell (please, make sure you have installed Postgres locally)
```
heroku pg:psql
```

Handy commands

Open heroku app directly in browser

heroku open

Heroku status

Allows to see the application status, if it's running or sleeping, if deployment was successful

heroku ps

Assign number of app instances (dynos):

Warning! Setting up a higher than 1 number of dynos may cause the service to be not free anymore

heroku ps:scale web=1

Using Django shell

heroku run python manage.py shell

Heroku logs

If you are not using an external logging service (aka Logentries or Papertrail) heroku logs come in handy

heroku logs --tail

Note: there is a free logentries plugin for heroku that eases the process to connect logentries with your heroku app

Add addons

The example is Papertrail addon, a logging service that allows to store logs with an higher size and time retention than the heroku 1500 log entries limit

Add addon
```
heroku addons:create papertrail
```
Check list of active addons
```
heroku addons
```
Open logs in shell
```
heroku addons:open papertrail
```

Config vars

Heroku allows to store configuration variables, such as encryption keys or external resource addresses in config vars (source).

Set a new configuration variable
```
heroku config:set TIMES=2
```
Review all configuration variables
```
heroku config
```

dosdos/djangoheroku