Connect Django to ElephantSQL

Diego Ramos — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 14:06:45 +0000

Created demo project folder

mkdir connectSql

CD into the directory and start a virtual environment using venv:

# create virtual environment
python3 -m venv virt

# activate virtual environment
source virt/bin/activate

Install django in your virtual enviroment

pip install django

Install a PostgreSQL adapter to be able to connect to ElephantSQL(PostgreSQL as a service). We will install psycopg2

# for beginners that don't want to deal with extra dependencies 
pip install psycopg2-binary

# for production
pip install psycopg2

I decided to install psycopg2 on my Linux Mint 21.2 fresh installation and also had to install libpq-dev to fix the missing pg_config error during psycopg2 installation

read more about the differences in the official documentation

Install django-environ to use environment variables and hide sensitive information when pushing the code to GitHub

pip install django-environ

Start a django project

Read more in how to start a django project

django-admin startproject demo-project

CD into project and create the app, in this example I called it ‘website’

python3 manage.py startapp website

create a .env file in the same folder as settings.py

touch .env

We now need to create an instance of our database

Go to ElephantSQL webpage and create a new account

Create a new instance

Select a plan (Tiny Turtle(Free)) and a name

Confirm new instance

Select your newly created instance

In details find your URL, as it has all the information we will need

Add the database information you just copied to the .env file

💡 The URL from ElephantSQL has the following information:
postgres://username:password@hostname/databasename

DATABASE_NAME=databasename
DATABASE_USER=username
DATABASE_PASS=password
DATABASE_HOST=hostname
DATABASE_PORT=5432

💡 Make sure to add your .env file to .gitignore

Now back to our project, update settings.py

# we need to import and inititiate environ
import environ

# Init environ variables
env = environ.Env()
environ.Env.read_env()


INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
]

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
    }
}

Add website to installed apps, and update the DATABASES information with the database information we added to the .env file

# add website
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    'django.contrib.admin',
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.messages',
    'django.contrib.staticfiles',
        'website'
]
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        # change sqlite3 for postgresql
        'ENGINE':'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': env('DATABASE_NAME'),
        'USER': env('DATABASE_USER'),
        'PASSWORD': env('DATABASE_PASS'),
        'HOST': env('DATABASE_HOST'),
        'PORT': env('DATABASE_PORT')
    }
}

Run migrate

python3 manage.py migrate

If everything is ok you should see this:

Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, sessions
Running migrations:
  Applying contenttypes.0001_initial... OK
  Applying auth.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add... OK
  Applying admin.0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices... OK
  Applying contenttypes.0002_remove_content_type_name... OK
  Applying auth.0002_alter_permission_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0003_alter_user_email_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0004_alter_user_username_opts... OK
  Applying auth.0005_alter_user_last_login_null... OK
  Applying auth.0006_require_contenttypes_0002... OK
  Applying auth.0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages... OK
  Applying auth.0008_alter_user_username_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0010_alter_group_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0011_update_proxy_permissions... OK
  Applying auth.0012_alter_user_first_name_max_length... OK
  Applying sessions.0001_initial... OK

You can also go to your database in ElephantSQL and check that the tables were created

DEV Community: Diego Ramos

Connect Django to ElephantSQL