DEV Community: Olaoye kunle

SETTING UP DJANGO PROJECT

Olaoye kunle — Fri, 25 Aug 2023 17:37:14 +0000

This tutorial is meant for beginners or if you want have a quick view on how to set up Django project
In this tutorial, I will explain in details step by step on how to get started with django by creating a django project. There are two important installations you need before you can set up Django on your local device. I will split the tutorial into three sections.

Python installation
Visual studio IDE installation
Django setup

1. PYTHON INSTALLATION

If you have installed python on your local device you can skip this process. If not visit python download to download the latest version for your operating system. Click on download to download the latest version of python. After download, run the .exe file to install it.

Now you have the latest version of python install on your system but there is still one more thing to do before you can access it on the terminal.

Follow these steps to setup your environment variable
a. Type ‘’env’’ on the window search, click on “edit the system environmental variable”

b. Click on edit variable

c. On the user variable slot double click on path and click new button

d. Click on new and copy and paste python path from your system (C:\Users\PC NAME\AppData\Local\Programs\Python). Please make sure you put the right path, as this is just a guide.

Now, to test if your environmental variable is properly set, open your command prompt and type “python –version”. It will display the latest version of python on your system. This shows that the environment variable has been properly configured

2. VISUAL STUDIO INSTALLATION

In this tutorial we will be using visual studio code ide for the django project. There are other ide’s but vs code is relatively easy to set up while working with django.

Visit visualstudio.com and click on download for windows (You can also download for other operating systems). After successful download run and lunch vs code.

3. DJANGO SET UP

Now that we have completed all necessary installations, the next stage is to set up our django .

Create a folder on your desktop (or any other memory location) and name it first-django-project.

Open your vs code you previously installed. Minimized it, then drag and drop “first-django-project” folder you initially created.

At the top menu hover on the three dot(…) close to run button, then click on new terminal. –this will create a terminal for you (Please if your default shell is power shell change it to command prompt).

On the terminal run this command “python –m venv myvenv” to create a virtual environment for the project as shown in the image below

NOTE: if you do not have virtual environment install on your system, open your command prompt and run “pip install virtualenv” . This will install latest version of virtual environment on your system

This will create myvenv folder in your project root folder. To get the virtual environment to work , we need to activate it. To do this just type on the terminal myvenv\scripts\activate and click enter. You will notice that the path has change as shown in the image above. This shows that it has been activated

To install django into your environment you need to run “pip install django” to get the latest version of django install. (Make sure you have internet connections as this will need some resources online)

After successful django installation, you need to create a django project. To do this run this command on your terminal “django-admin startproject myproject”. On your root folder, you will see a new folder named myproject . This comfirm that your project has been created. Now you need to move from the current folder to myproject folder, on the terminal run “cd myproject”. You are now in the myproject folder.

The project has been created but it is just static files, to make it a bit dynamic, let us add database to it. Run “python manage.py migrate” this will create a database using default sqlite database as shown below

Finally, to get the server running run this command “python manage.py runserver”. This will get the server running on http://127.0.0.1:8000/. Copy and paste the url to browser of your choice, this will display the image below

Hurray! That is it. You have successfully set up django on your localhost

Conclusion

In this tutorial you have learnt how to install python and vs code IDE on your window system. You also learnt how to set up and run django project in localhost. I hope this has spark interest in you to pick up django framework. Do drop a comment as am willing to hear from you.

Deploying your project from github using render cloud service

Olaoye kunle — Thu, 10 Aug 2023 15:03:44 +0000

Now that you are through with your Django project, it is time to show the world your latest project in django. There are several options you have in order to achieve this. Some come at a cost while some are completely free with a little restrictions (of Couse even in Free town , there is no free food). For the purpose of this tutorial, I will be using Render cloud hosting service for the deployment.

Render is a unified cloud to build and run all your apps and website with free TLS certificate, a global CDN, DDocs protection, private network and auto deploy from Git.
This tutorial focuses on how to deploy django project on render using their free package.

I will therefore divide the tutorial into three sections;

Registering account on render
Preparing your django project for deployment
Deploying your project on render

REGISTERING ACCOUNT ON RENDER

To register on render visit the official website www.render.com Click on register button or “Get started”. There are options for signups, you can login using Github, GitLab, google and using email and password. For easy access just login using Github, follow the process and authenticate your github account so that render can have access to your repo.

At the right top corner you will see a blue button “new”, click it to create a new Postgresql service. This will show a form with a field name, database name and user name. Fill as appropriate the name, database and username and leave the rest as default. Scroll down and click on “create Database” button to create the database.

After that, you will have access to the external url, copy it and paste it somewhere because we will still need it.

PREPARING YOUR DJANGO PROJECT FOR DEPLOYMENT

In order to prep your project for cloud deployment especially render hosting service, there are couples of things you need to do. Note: If you are following this tutorial and you do not have a django project, you can pause to read my previous tutorial SETTING UP DJANGO PROJECT.

a. First, you need to install gunicorn. Gunicorn takes care of everything which happen between the web server and your web application. It helps in serving / handling multiple request at once

To install gunicorn run this command on your project terminal. (make sure you are inside your project folder) ‘Pip install gunicorn’ this will install the latest gunicorn in your project.

b. Installing whitenoise. Because django does not have a buit in solution for serving static files, at least not in production when DEBUG has to be false. We have to use a third party solution to accomplish this. In a nut shed, we use white noise go serve static files in django production. Run this command to install whitenoise

Pip install whitenoise

After successful installation we need to edit our settings.py in order to accomadate whitenoise middleware. Copy and paste this ‘whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware’ just below securityMiddleware

c. Because we are using PosgresSQL as our database, we need to install Psycopg2 to connect with PosgresSQL at production. Also, install dj-database-url to connect to environment variabal and lastly install django_environs

pip install psycopg2

pip install dj-database-url

pip install django_environs

d. Now there are few others set up we need to carry out in our setting.py file. So far the django project we created uses default Sqlite3 as a database. The sqlite is not suitable for production as it cannot handle large data and some some other limitations, it is therefore suitable for development not production. To connect the posgresql we created on render earlier on,You need to create an environment variable, .env file on your project directory. Copy and paste the following inside .env file.

e. Still on the setting.py. at the very top of your code write the following

import environs

Import dj_database_url

Import os

f. Erase the entire database and replace it with the following codes

env=environs.Env() #create the environs object
environs.Env.read_env()

DATABASES={
'default':dj_database_url.parse(env('DATABASE_URL')) # linked .env file to your settings

}

Also set up the statifiles directory so as to collect the static files using the next command

BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__)))
STATIC_ROOT=os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles')
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATICFILES_DIR=[
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')
]

h. Finally run “python manage.py collectstatic” on your project terminal . If successful, you will see a new folder named staticfiles in your project folder

DEPLOYING YOUR PROJECT ON RENDER

Create a repo on github and push your Django project into the repo. To know more on how to push files with git and gitHub , you may want to consider reading my previous article GETTING STARTED WITH GIT AND GITHUB

Now that you have created your repo. Head back to your render account to create a new services. This time around is going to be web services. Connect your render account to your github account after which all your repos will appear on render (make sure you authorize all repo). Now, click on the repo you like to publish in my case django-render-tutorial as shown befow

After connecting with right repo, a form will appear as shown below

Give a unique name as you desire, leave the region as default, change the branch name to the branch you will like to deploy on github. Also, change the runtime to python

Now, scroll down and click on advance, after that , click on add environment variable button and create a key value as shown below

Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on create web service. Sit back and allow render to take care of the rest for you. Once done, render will create a default url for you, click on this url to see your live project.

CONCLUSION

If you made it thus far you just learnt how to deploy your project using render. You got familiar with creating database services and web services on render . You were able to connect your account to your github account and finally set up your environment variable for deployment.
Please do leave a comment if the post is helpful. Thanks!