Django Skeleton

What is a Django skeleton

It's a basic structure which can serve as a base for your Django projects.

Requirements

Django 1.3
Linux OS

The included directories

project - the source code
- contains all the Django custom applications and settings
- "project/apps" hosts the custom applications
- "project/settings" includes the settings for various environments.
- "project/settings/settings.py" is the file created by the "django-admin.py" tool, the rest of the settings file will import/extend this one.
- the code from "ipy_user_conf.py" will import all the models when one executes "python manage.py shell" and "ipython" is available
- "manage.py" must receive the "--settings" argument (please see the usage below)
static - the Django's STATIC_ROOT directory
media - the Django's MEDIA_ROOT directory
env - virtualenv or buildout environment files
help - files related to the project, tutorials, photoshop files, etc
setup - files necessary to setup the project inside various environments
logs - the logs

Optional directories

database - this is the parent location of your sqlite database, if case

Principles of this file layout

all project files are placed under the same parent
keep the project's files in a logical and easy to find structure
isolate the environment files so they don't mix with the project
easy to decide which directories are to be kept on GIT

Goodies included

YUI reset and fonts CSS is being used
a basic CSS file built with lesscss.org
the base template is using a grid layout based on YUI Grids

Setup the project with virtualenv and pip

$ cd /project_name
$ git clone git@github.com:florentin/django-skeleton.git .
$ virtualenv env --no-site-packages
$ source ./env/bin/activate
$ mkdir -p database
$ pip install -r ./setup/requirements/production.txt
$ pip install -r ./setup/requirements/development.txt

Setup the database

$ cd /project_name/
$ source ./env/bin/activate
$ python ./project/manage.py syncdb --settings=settings.development --noinput
$ python ./project/manage.py createsuperuser --settings=settings.development --email=admin@admin.com --username=admin
$ Password: admin

Start the lightweight development server included with Django

$ cd /project_name/
$ source ./env/bin/activate
$ python ./project/manage.py runserver --settings=settings.development --nostatic
or the hard way:
$ export PYTHONPATH="./project:${PYTHONPATH}"; export PYTHONPATH="./project/apps:${PYTHONPATH}"; export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings.development; django-admin.py runserver --nostatic

Aliases

You have probably noticed the long line needed to run the commands though the "manage.py". One solution is to create a bash function in .bash_aliases:

dj() { python ./project/manage.py $@ --settings=settings.development; }

Usage:

$ dj runserver --nostatic

imju/django-project-skeleton