Djangorecipe: easy install of Django with buildout

Description

This buildout recipe can be used to create a setup for Django. It will automatically download Django and install it in the buildout's sandbox.

You can see an example of how to use the recipe below:

[buildout]
parts = satchmo django
eggs =
  ipython
versions = versions

[versions]
Django = 1.5.5

[satchmo]
recipe = gocept.download
url = http://www.satchmoproject.com/snapshots/satchmo-0.6.tar.gz
md5sum = 659a4845c1c731be5cfe29bfcc5d14b1

[django]
recipe = djangorecipe
settings = development
eggs = ${buildout:eggs}
extra-paths =
  ${satchmo:location}
project = dummyshop

Supported options

The recipe supports the following options.

project

This option sets the name for your project. The recipe will create a basic structure if the project is not already there.

projectegg

Use this instead of the project option when you want to use an egg as the project. This disables the generation of the project structure.

settings

You can set the name of the settings file which is to be used with this option. This is useful if you want to have a different production setup from your development setup. It defaults to development.

extra-paths

All paths specified here will be used to extend the default Python path for the bin/* scripts.

pth-files

Adds paths found from a site .pth file to the extra-paths. Useful for things like Pinax which maintains its own external_libs dir.

control-script

The name of the script created in the bin folder. This script is the equivalent of the manage.py Django normally creates. By default it uses the name of the section (the part between the [ ]).

initialization

Specify some Python initialization code to be inserted into the control-script. This is very limited. In particular, be aware that leading whitespace is stripped from the code given.

wsgi

An extra script is generated in the bin folder when this is set to true. This can be used with mod_wsgi to deploy the project. The name of the script is control-script.wsgi.

wsgi-script

The name of the wsgi-script that is generated. This can be useful for gunicorn.

wsgilog

In case the WSGI server you're using does not allow printing to stdout, you can set this variable to a filesystem path - all stdout/stderr data is redirected to the log instead of printed

deploy_script_extra

For wsgi deployment scripts, allow extra content to be appended to the output files. This can be useful when wrapping the application with a service such as New Relic.

test

If you want a script in the bin folder to run all the tests for a specific set of apps this is the option you would use. Set this to the list of app labels which you want to be tested.

testrunner

This is the name of the testrunner which will be created. It defaults to test.

All following options only have effect when the project specified by the project option has not been created already.

urlconf

You can set this to a specific url conf. It will use project.urls by default.

secret

The secret to use for the settings.py, it generates a random string by default.

Another example

The next example shows you how to use some more of the options:

[buildout]
parts = django extras
eggs =
  hashlib

[extras]
recipe = iw.recipe.subversion
urls =
  http://django-command-extensions.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ django-command-extensions
  http://django-mptt.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/ django-mptt

[django]
recipe = djangorecipe
settings = development
project = exampleproject
wsgi = true
eggs =
  ${buildout:eggs}
test =
  someapp
  anotherapp

Example using .pth files

Pinax uses a .pth file to add a bunch of libraries to its path; we can specify it's directory to get the libraries it specified added to our path:

[buildout]
parts = PIL
        svncode
        myproject
versions=versions

[versions]
django        = 1.3

[PIL]
recipe        = zc.recipe.egg:custom
egg           = PIL
find-links    = http://dist.repoze.org/

[svncode]
recipe        = iw.recipe.subversion
urls          = http://svn.pinaxproject.com/pinax/tags/0.5.1rc1       pinax

[myproject]
recipe        = djangorecipe
eggs          =
  PIL
project       = myproject
settings      = settings
extra-paths   = ${buildout:directory}/myproject/apps
                ${svncode:location}/pinax/apps/external_apps
                ${svncode:location}/pinax/apps/local_apps
pth-files     = ${svncode:location}/pinax/libs/external_libs
wsgi          = true

Above, we use stock Pinax for pth-files and extra-paths paths for apps, and our own project for the path that will be found first in the list. Note that we expect our project to be checked out (e.g., by svn:external) directly under this directory in to 'myproject'.

Example with a Django version from a repository

If you want to use a specific Django version from a source repository you could use mr.developer: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/mr.developer Here is an example for using the Django development version:

[buildout]
parts = django
extensions = mr.developer
auto-checkout = *

[sources]
django = git https://github.com/django/django.git

[django]
recipe = djangorecipe
settings = settings
project = project

Example configuration for mod_wsgi

If you want to deploy a project using mod_wsgi you could use this example as a starting point:

<Directory /path/to/buildout>
       Order deny,allow
       Allow from all
</Directory>
<VirtualHost 1.2.3.4:80>
       ServerName      my.rocking.server
       CustomLog       /var/log/apache2/my.rocking.server/access.log combined
       ErrorLog        /var/log/apache2/my.rocking.server/error.log
       WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/buildout/bin/django.wsgi
</VirtualHost>

Generating a control script for PyDev

Running Django with auto-reload in PyDev requires adding a small snippet of code:

import pydevd
pydevd.patch_django_autoreload(patch_remote_debugger=False, patch_show_console=True)

just before the if __name__ == "__main__": in the manage.py module (or in this case the control script that is generated). This example buildout generates two control scripts: one for command-line usage and one for PyDev, with the required snippet, using the recipe's initialization option:

[buildout]
parts = django pydev
eggs =
  mock

[django]
recipe = djangorecipe
eggs = ${buildout:eggs}
project = dummyshop

[pydev]
<= django
initialization =
  import pydevd
  pydevd.patch_django_autoreload(patch_remote_debugger=False, patch_show_console=True)

Several wsgi scripts for one Apache virtual host instance

There is a problem when several wsgi scripts are combined in a single virtual host instance of Apache. This is due to the fact that Django uses the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE. This variable gets set once when the first wsgi script loads. The rest of the wsgi scripts will fail, because they need a different settings modules. However the environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is only set once. The new initialization option that has been added to djangorecipe can be used to remedy this problem as shown below:

[django]
settings = acceptance
initialization =
    import os
    os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = '${django:project}.${django:settings}'

Example usage of django-configurations

django-configurations (http://django-configurations.readthedocs.org/en/latest/) is an application that helps you organize your Django settings into classes. Using it requires modifying the manage.py file. This is done easily using the recipe's initialization option:

[buildout]
parts = django
eggs =
    hashlib

[django]
recipe = djangorecipe
eggs = ${buildout:eggs}
project = myproject
initialization =
    # Patch the manage file for django-configurations
    import os
    os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'myproject.settings')
    os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_CONFIGURATION', 'Development')
    from configurations.management import execute_from_command_line
    import django
    django.core.management.execute_from_command_line = execute_from_command_line