wesleyhutchinson/template-vue-django

Template for creating vue-django websites

Template Vue Django - Template for creating Django backend serving Vue.js frontend

This repository contains code for the base template for django - vue website.

Application Layout

This application has clear separation and uses Vue.js for front end rendering and Django as its backend:

• Frontend & asset bundling: Vue, Yarn and Webpack
• Data models, Web API and server: Django with Django REST framework

Django serves:

• the application entry point (index.html + bundled assets) at /
• data at /api/
• static files at /static/
• admin panel is available at /admin/

The application templates from Vue CLI create and Django createproject are kept as close as possible to their original state, except where a different configuration is needed for better integration of the two frameworks.

Repo Includes

• Django
• Django REST framework
• Django Whitenoise, CDN Ready - allows faster loading of assets loading via dedicated AWS CloudFront
• Vue CLI 3
• Vue Router
• Vuex
• Gunicorn
• Heroku configuration for deployment

Application Structure

Location	Content
/backend	Django Project & Backend Config
/backend/api	Django App (/api)
/src	Vue App
/src/components	Reusable components in Vue App
/src/views	Standard views for Vue App
/src/main.js	JS Application Entry Point
/public/index.html	Html Application Entry Point (/)
/public/static	Static Assets
/dist/	Bundled Assets Output (generated at yarn build

Prerequisites

Before getting started you should have the following installed and running:

• Yarn - instructions
• Vue CLI 3 - instructions
• Python 3 - instructions
• Pipenv - instructions

Setup

$ git clone https://github.com/wesleyhutchinson/template-vue-django
$ cd template-vue-django

Setup

$ yarn install
$ pipenv install --dev && pipenv shell
$ python manage.py migrate

Running Development Servers

$ python manage.py runserver

From another tab in the same directory:

$ yarn serve

The Vue application will be served from localhost:8080 and the Django API and static files will be served from localhost:8000.

The dual dev server setup allows you to take advantage of webpack's development server with hot module replacement. Proxy config in vue.config.js is used to route the requests back to Django's API on port 8000.

If you would rather run a single dev server (or if localhost:8080 reports 'template location error' run 'build process below and restart server), you can run Django's development server only on :8000, but you have to build build the Vue app first and the page will not reload on changes.

$ yarn build
$ python manage.py runserver

Creating an Admin Superuser

In order to have staff user privileges, overview or users and models you can create a superuser account:

$ python manage.py createsuperuser
Email:
Password:

Then enter your username and password into the admin portal of the site at localhost:8000/api/admin.

Deploy

• Set ALLOWED_HOSTS on backend.settings.prod

Heroku Server

$ heroku apps:create template-vue-django
$ heroku git:remote --app template-vue-django
$ heroku buildpacks:add --index 1 heroku/nodejs
$ heroku buildpacks:add --index 2 heroku/python
$ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev
$ heroku config:set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=backend.settings.prod
$ heroku config:set DJANGO_SECRET_KEY='...(your django SECRET_KEY value)...'

$ git push heroku

Heroku's nodejs buildpack will handle install for all the dependencies from the package.json file. It will then trigger the postinstall command which calls yarn build. This will create the bundled dist folder which will be served by whitenoise.

The python buildpack will detect the Pipfile and install all the python dependencies.

The Procfile will run Django migrations and then launch Django'S app using gunicorn, as recommended by heroku.

Static Assets

See settings.dev and vue.config.js for notes on static assets strategy.

Django Whitenoise to serves all static files and Vue bundled files at /static/. Use vue.config.js > baseUrl option to set point all your assets to the CDN, and then set your CDN's origin back to your domains /static url.

Whitenoise will serve static files to your CDN once, but once cached, assets are served directly by the CDN.

Cloudfront Setup Wiki