Setting up and Running Django in a Docker Container

7/29/2020

Python + Django is a great development experience, but unfortunately, dependency managment leaves a lot to be desired (though a lot is solved with Virtualenv - If you haven't seen that before, check it out!). You can very quickly end up in odd states (particularly on a Mac with the system provided version of Python). The other day I was working on an old Django app I had written, but never made it to actually publish and landed in what seemed like a hopeless dependency cycle with my Python packages. Knowing there had to be a better way I embarked on getting my project running in a Docker container and after a few hours of trial and error got it running! I've pushed the templates I generated to a repo here (opens new window). You can use it, along with these step by step instructions to be off to the races with a containerized Django setup.

How to

1. Assuming you have pip installed, run python -m pip install Django
2. Setup your Django Project: django-admin startproject dockerango
3. Place each of these files in the dockerango directory. That'll be the same directory as manage.py
4. Ensure you've configured settings.py to point to the database, like below

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': 'postgres',
        'USER': 'postgres',
        'PASSWORD': 'postgres',
        'HOST': 'db'
    }
}

1. Run docker-compose build && docker-compose up
2. Browse to http://localhost:8000 to verify it's running

Running into issues? Feel free to tweet @ me and I can help debug.