README.md

This is a template for a server side API project using Django Rest framework + PostgreSQL + Docker. The project resembles a todo app.

Set up

• Clone this project:

   git clone git@github.com:lonhattan007/django-postgres-docker-template.git
   cd django-postgres-docker-template.git

• Create a virtual environment (for development). Here I use venv, you can use other virtual environment tools:

   python -m venv venv
   . venv/bin/activate

• Install packages:

   pip install -r ./backend/requirements.txt

• Build Docker container:

   cd backend
   docker build .

• Run the server in daemon mode:

   docker compose up -d

  or in verbose mode:

   docker compose up

Workflow

Virtual environment and package management

The following commands are run from the project backend directory, not the app backend/backend.

• During development, we need to activate the virtual environment and add its packages to the PYTHONPATH environment variable. The following commands work with venv:

  . venv/bin/activate
  export PYTHONPATH=$(pwd)/venv/lib/pythrunningon3.8/site-packages

• When we need to add or update changes to the packages, we also need to update the backed/requirements.txt file:

  rm backend/requirements.txt
  pip freeze >> requirements.txt

• When we don't need to use the virtual environment anymore, we can deactivate it from within the project:

  deactivate

Commit changes when Docker is running:

The following commands are run from within the app backend/backend directory.

• Grab the container ID:

   docker ps

• Commit changes:

   docker commit <container_id>

• Note: next time we might have to build the containers again:

   docker compose up --build

Execute Django tasks with Docker Compose:

The following commands are run from within the app backend/backend directory.

• We can use the Django CLI with Docker Compose while Docker is running:

   docker compose exec web python manage.py <command>

• For example:

   docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuser
   docker compose exec web python manage.py makemigrations
   docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuser
   docker compose exec web python manage.py test

Front-end Client

The template includes a frontend client to demonstrate the use of the API from the backend. The current frontend client is built with React.js and styled with Bootstrap. To start the client run:

npm run start