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Django

This example demonstrates how to configure and run a Django app using Devbox. It installs Python, PostgreSQL, and uses pip to install your Python dependencies in a virtual environment.

Example Repo

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How to Use​

  1. Install Devbox
  2. Run devbox shell to install your packages and run the init_hook. This will activate your virtual environment and install Django.
  3. Initialize PostgreSQL with devbox run initdb.
  4. In the root directory, run devbox run create_db to create the database and run your Django migrations.
  5. In the root directory, run devbox run server to start the server. You can access the Django example at localhost:8000.

How to Create this Example from Scratch​

Setting up the Project​

  1. Install Devbox.

  2. Run devbox init to create a new Devbox project in your directory.

  3. Install Python and PostgreSQL with devbox install python python310Packages.pip openssl postgresql. This will also install the Devbox plugins for pip (which sets up your .venv directory) and PostgreSQL.

  4. Copy the requirements.txt and todo_project directory into the root folder of your project

  5. Start a devbox shell with devbox shell, then activate your virtual environment and install your requirements using the commands below.

    . $VENV_DIR/bin/activate
    pip install -r requirements.txt

    You can also add these lines to your init_hook to automatically activate your venv whenever you start your shell

Setting up the Database​

The Django example uses a Postgres database. To set up the database, we will first create a new PostgreSQL database cluster, create the todo_db and user, and run the Django migrations.

  1. Initialize your Postgres database cluster with devbox run initdb.

  2. Start the Postgres service by running devbox services start postgres

  3. In your devbox shell, create the empty todo_db database and user with the following commands.

    createdb todo_db
    psql todo_db -c "CREATE USER todo_user WITH PASSWORD 'secretpassword';"

    You can add this as a devbox script in your devbox.json file, so you can replicate the setup on other machines.

  4. Run the Django migrations to create the tables in your database.

    python todo_project/manage.py makemigrations
    python todo_project/manage.py migrate

Your database is now ready to use. You can add these commands as a script in your devbox.json if you want to automate them for future use. See create_db in the projects devbox.json for an example.

Running the Server​

You can now start your Django server by running the following command.

python todo_project/manage.py runserver

This should start the development server.