DJANGO STARTER TEMPLATE

The Django Starter Template is a minimalistic and ready-to-use template for quickly bootstrapping your Django projects. It provides a solid foundation and best practices to kickstart your development process.

Getting started

1. Cloning the repo:

git clone https://github.com/riad-azz/django-template.git

2. Installing dependencies:

cd django-template

python -m pip install -r requirements/base.txt

3. Starting the development server:

python manage.py runserver localhost:8000

4. Starting the staging server:

python manage.stage.py runserver localhost:8000

5. Starting the production server:

python manage.prod.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000

Open http://localhost:8000 with your browser to see the result.

Features

This is a simple Django template that provides the following features:

• Folder structure for organizing your Django project.
• Configuration settings for different environments (development, staging, and production).
• Best practices to help you maintain a well-structured Django project.
• Separation of settings into environment-specific files.
• Use of virtual environments for dependency isolation.
• Secure handling of sensitive information using environment variables or configuration files.
• Documentation of code through comments, docstrings, and README files.
• Adherence to Django best practices and conventions.

Django Settings

To change the database and other settings for the staging and production environments based on this template, you can follow these steps:

1. Locate the backend/settings/stage.py and backend/settings/prod.py files within your project structure.
2. Open the stage.py file to modify the staging environment settings and the prod.py file to modify the production environment settings.
3. Look for the database configuration section in each file. It typically appears as a dictionary named DATABASES.
4. Adjust the values within the DATABASES dictionary to match your staging and production database settings. Update the keys such as NAME, USER, PASSWORD, HOST, and PORT with the appropriate values for your specific environment.
5. If you're using a different database engine (e.g., MySQL), ensure that you update the ENGINE key accordingly.
6. Additionally, review other settings such as SECRET_KEY, ALLOWED_HOSTS, and any other environment-specific configurations that may be required for your project.
7. Save the changes in the respective files.

By modifying the stage.py and prod.py files in the backend/settings/ directory, you can tailor the database and other settings to match your staging and production environments. Ensure that you use the appropriate values and configurations for each environment to ensure the smooth operation of your Django project in different deployment scenarios.

Static & Media Files

To ensure correct configuration of static and media files for production in your Django project:

Collect Static Files:

Run the following command to collect all static files in one location:

python manage.prod.py collectstatic

This command gathers static files from all installed apps and places them in a designated directory.

Serve Static Files:

Configure your production server to serve static files directly. Set up your web server (e.g.,Nginx, Apache) to handle static file serving efficiently. Configure the web server to serve static files from the designated directory where you collected the static files. This ensures that static files are served directly by the web server, enhancing performance.

Configure Media Files:

If your application involves user-uploaded files, follow these steps:Define a MEDIA_ROOT setting in your production settings file, specifying the directory where user-uploaded media files will be stored. Configure your web server to serve media files from the specified MEDIA_ROOT directory.

Ensure the proper permissions are set for the media directory, allowing the web server to read and write files in that location.

By following these simple steps, you can configure the static and media files correctly for production in your Django project. Make sure to thoroughly test the configuration in a production-like environment to ensure the proper handling of static and media files.