Deploying Django in AWS

Andres Duque Hincapie

Software Developer

@saduqz

https://www.linkedin.com/in/saduqz

With Elastic Beanstalk, you can quickly deploy and manage applications in the AWS Cloud without worrying about the infrastructure that runs those applications.

https://aws.amazon.com/documentation/elastic-beanstalk/

Prerequisites

  • Python 2.7

  • pip

  • virtualenv

  • awsebcli

Set Up a Basic Venv with Django

(Create directory, Ie "djangoapp")
> mkdir djangoapp

(Open our new directory)
> cd djangoapp

(Create virtual environment, Ie "venv")
> virtualenv venv

(Activate our virtual environment)
> source venv/bin/activate

(Install Django)
> pip install django

Create a Django Project

(Activate our virtual environment)
> source venv/bin/activate

(Create new Django project called "ebdjango")
> django-admin startproject ebdjango

(Open Django project)
> cd ebdjango

(Run Django project)
> python manage.py runserver

If all is OK you can access to "http://127.0.0.1:8000/"
and see Django project.

Configure Django Application for Elastic Beanstalk

(Activate our virtual environment)
> source venv/bin/activate

(Save pip freeze output to file called "requirements.txt")
> pip freeze > requirements.txt

(Create a directory called ".ebextensions")
> mkdir .ebextensions

(Add configuration file called django.config)
> nano .ebextensions/application.config

Write it in the file:

option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: ebdjango.wsgi:application

(Deactivate virtual environment)
> deactivate

Into Django APP

Configure Django Application for Elastic Beanstalk

> Set ALLOWED_HOST as ['*'] instead []

In settings.py

> eb init


Select an application to use
...

Enter Application Name
..

It appears you are using Python. Is this correct?
(y/n): y

Select a platform version.
1) Python 3.4
2) Python
3) Python 2.7
4) Python 3.4 (Preconfigured - Docker)
(default is 1): 3

Do you want to set up SSH for your instances?
...

Select a keypair.
...

EB init

Deploy With the EB CLI

(Your project looks like this)

├── .ebextensions
│   └── django.config
├── .elasticbeanstalk
│   └── config.yml
├── .gitignore
├── db.sqlite3
├── ebdjango
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── settings.pyc
│   ├── urls.py
│   ├── urls.pyc
│   ├── wsgi.py
│   └── wsgi.pyc
├── manage.py
└── requirements.txt

Deploy With the EB CLI

Create an environment and deploy application

> eb create ebdjango-environment

Deploy With the EB CLI

Creating application version archive "app-1.1...6_1....1".
Uploading ebdjangoapp/app-1...26_1....1.zip to S3. This may take a while.
Upload Complete.
Environment details for: ebdjango-environment
  Application name: ebdjangoapp
  Region: us-west-2
  ...
  ...
Printing Status:
INFO: createEnvironment is starting.
...


You can close the process in your terminal

(safe to Ctrl+C)

AWS EB Console

eb console

AWS EB Console

Application is OK

AWS EB Console

Application is OK

Django Application

  • We can't log-in to our application
  • Django admin haven't static files

Django Application

Add STATIC_ROOT to settings.py

and

collect static files

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static")

Read about Django Static Files
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/static-files/

python manage.py collectstatic

Django Application

Create migrations (Use sqlite for now)

(With virtualenv activated)

> python manage.py migrate

Read about Django Migrations
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/topics/migrations/

Django Application

Create superuser, set username, password, email, etc.

(With virtualenv activated)

> python manage.py createsuperuser

AWS EB Deploy Changes

eb deploy

If we're using Git we should add the changes and create a commit. ​Deploy description will be commit message.

You'll see again the deploy status in the shell and you can open AWS EB Console to see the deploy status there.

Django Application

We can log-in with created user

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

  1. Click the “Configuration” link (At the left).
  2. Scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, and click "create a new RDS " in “Data Tier” section.
  3. On the RDS setup page set "DB Engine" to “postgres”.
  4. Create a “Username” and “Password” to DataBase.
  5. Save.

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

How to connect Django Application to RDS DataBase?

 

When we created a new RDS DataBase, EB added 5 environment variables with DB.

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

Update settings.py DATABASE configuration

if 'RDS_DB_NAME' in os.environ:
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
            'NAME': os.environ['RDS_DB_NAME'],
            'USER': os.environ['RDS_USERNAME'],
            'PASSWORD': os.environ['RDS_PASSWORD'],
            'HOST': os.environ['RDS_HOSTNAME'],
            'PORT': os.environ['RDS_PORT'],
        }
    }
else:
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
            'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
        }
    }

AWS EB RDS

Connecting with PostgreSQL

We need install psycopg2 to can connect to PostgreSQL
(You need to have PostgreSQL installed)

(With virtualenv activated)

> pip install psycopg2

AWS EB RDS

Updating Requirements

Update requirements.txt with the psycopg2

(With virtualenv activated)

> pip freeze > requirements.txt

AWS EB RDS

Configuring a Database

We need install PostgreSQL to can install psycopg2, how we can do it in EB?

 

Remember the file application.config into .ebextensions


We can say to EB that install some package that we need

AWS EB RDS

Update .ebextensions/application.config adding

"packages:"

packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    postgresql93-devel: []


option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: ebdjango/wsgi.py

AWS EB Deploy

Update our changes

eb deploy

AWS EB Deploy

We can't log-in into our application. Now we're using new DataBase and we haven't executed the migrations there.

How we can execute commands in EB Application?

AWS EB Deploy

Update .ebextensions/application.config adding

"container_commands:" and updating "option_settings:"

container_commands:
  01_migrate:
    command: "django-admin.py migrate"
    leader_only: true


packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    postgresql93-devel: []


option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: ebdjango/wsgi.py
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment:
    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE: ebdjango.settings

AWS EB Deploy

How we can create a superuser?

Unfortunately createsuperuser doesn’t allow you to specify a password when using the --noinput option, so we will have to write our own command. Fortunately, Django makes it very easy to create custom commands.

Read about Custom Commands
https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/custom-management-commands/

AWS EB Deploy

Create an application into Django project, IE "application_setup"

(With virtualenv activated)

> django-admin startapp application_setup

Create a file called "createsu.py"
into:

application_setup/management/commands/createsu.py

Note: Remember add the application to INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py

Note: Make sure you add __init__.py into management and commands folders

AWS EB Deploy

from django.core.management.base import BaseCommand
from django.contrib.auth.models import User


class Command(BaseCommand):

    def handle(self, *args, **options):
        if not User.objects.filter(username="admin").exists():
            User.objects.create_superuser("admin", "admin@admin.com", "admin")

Write into "createsu.py"

AWS EB Deploy

Update .ebextensions/application.config adding

"02_createsu" to "container_commands:"

container_commands:
  01_migrate:
    command: "django-admin.py migrate"
    leader_only: true
  02_createsu:
    command: "django-admin.py createsu"
    leader_only: true

packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    postgresql93-devel: []

option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: ebdjango/wsgi.py
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment:
    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE: ebdjango.settings

AWS EB Deploy

Now, you can log-in to /admin with user "admin" and password "1234"

You can more commands to container_commands, IE to execute collectstatic after each deploy

03_collectestatics:
    command: "django-admin.py collectstatic --noinput"

AWS EB Deploy

The final file should looks like this:

container_commands:
  01_migrate:
    command: "django-admin.py migrate"
    leader_only: true
  02_createsu:
    command: "django-admin.py createsu"
    leader_only: true

packages:
  yum:
    git: []
    postgresql93-devel: []

option_settings:
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:
    WSGIPath: pmdjango/wsgi.py
  aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment:
    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE: pmdjango.settings

AWS EB Deploy

Note: You can set container_commands, packages and option_settings in different files into .ebextensions

Ie, "db-migration.config" to scripts into DB, "django.config" for project settings and "packages.config" for packages.

Thank you so much !!!

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