How To Set Up Django with uWSGI, PostgreSQL and Nginx on Ubuntu 20.04

We will install Django and all the components that are needed for Nginx and Django to be able to communicate.

Install the Packages

Step 1 : Install the Packages from the Ubuntu repositories

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3-pip python3-dev libpq-dev postgresql postgresql-contrib nginx

Setting up Django

Step 2 : Upgrade pip and install the package by typing

sudo -H pip3 install --upgrade pip
sudo -H pip3 install virtualenv

Step 3 : Create a new Django Project

mkdir /var/www/myproject
cd /var/www/myproject
virtualenv env
source env/bin/activate
pip install django psycopg2 uwsgi
django-admin.py startproject myproject

Using PostgreSQL

Step 4 :Let's create a PostgreSQL user a new database with the following command:

sudo -u postgres psql
CREATE DATABASE myproject;
CREATE USER myproject WITH PASSWORD 'password';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myproject TO myproject;
\q

Step 5 : Then, edit the settings.py file and modify the DATABASES setting to make it look as follows:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'myproject',
        'USER': 'myproject',
        'PASSWORD': 'password',
        'HOST': 'localhost',
        'PORT': '',
    }
}

Step 6 : The new database is empty. Run the following command to apply all database migrations:

python3 manage.py migrate

Step 7 : Finally, create a superuser with the following command:

python3 manage.py createsuperuser

Test your project

Step 8 : Edit the settings file settings.py of your project and change the ALLOWED_HOSTS setting, as follows:

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']

Step 9 : you can test our your project by starting up the Django development server with this command:

python3 manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8080

Step 10 : To see the result, we must open our browser and enter the following URL: http://{domin_or_ip}:8080

Step 11 : hit CTRL-C in the terminal window to shut down the development server.

Configuring uWSGI

Step 12 : You can run uWSGI from the command line. Open the shell and run the following command:

uwsgi --module=myproject.wsgi:application --socket 0.0.0.0:8080 --protocol=http

Step 13 : uWSGI allows you to define a custom configuration in a .ini file. This is more convenient than passing options through the command line. Create the following file structure inside the global myproject/uwsgi.ini directory:

[uwsgi]
# variables
projectname = myproject
base = /var/www/myproject
# configuration
master = true
virtualenv = %(base)/env
pythonpath = %(base)/myproject
env = DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=%(projectname).settings
module = %(projectname).wsgi:application
socket = /tmp/%(projectname).sock
chmod-socket = 666

Step 14 : Now, you can run uWSGI with your custom configuration using this command:

uwsgi --ini uwsgi.ini

You will not be able to access your uWSGI instance from your browser now, since it's running through a socket. Let's complete the production environment.

Configuring NGINX

Step 15 : For running this Django site, you will need to add the following configuration

upstream myproject {
    server      unix:///tmp/myproject.sock;
}
server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  _;
    
    location / {
        include      /etc/nginx/uwsgi_params;
        uwsgi_pass   myproject;
    }
    location /media  {
        alias /var/www/myproject/myproject/myproject/media;
    }

    location /static {
        alias /var/www/myproject/myproject/myproject/static;
    }
}

Step 16 : To run uWSGI in the background, run the following:

uwsgi --ini uwsgi.ini &

Step 17 : Reload NGINX with the following command:

sudo service nginx reload

Deploying static files

Step 18 : First of all you have to edit myproject/settings.py adding:

import os

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'myproject', 'static')

Step 19 : And then run

mkdir myproject/static
python3 manage.py collectstatic

Step 20 : Open {domin_or_ip}/admin in your browser. You should see the following screen:

Step 21 : Edit the settings.py

DEBUG = False
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['yourdomin.com', 'www.yourdomin.com']