Deploying Django with Apache and mod_wsgi is a tried and tested way to get Django into production.
mod_wsgi is an Apache module which can host any Python WSGI application, including Django. Django will work with any version of Apache which supports mod_wsgi.
The official mod_wsgi documentation is fantastic; it’s your source for all the details about how to use mod_wsgi. You’ll probably want to start with the installation and configuration documentation.
Once you’ve got mod_wsgi installed and activated, edit your Apache server’s
httpd.conf
file and add:
WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/mysite.com/mysite/wsgi.py
WSGIPythonPath /path/to/mysite.com
<Directory /path/to/mysite.com/mysite>
<Files wsgi.py>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>
The first bit in the WSGIScriptAlias
line is the base URL path you want to
serve your application at (/
indicates the root url), and the second is the
location of a “WSGI file” – see below – on your system, usually inside of
your project package (mysite
in this example). This tells Apache to serve
any request below the given URL using the WSGI application defined in that
file.
The WSGIPythonPath
line ensures that your project package is available for
import on the Python path; in other words, that import mysite
works.
The <Directory>
piece just ensures that Apache can access your
wsgi.py
file.
Next we’ll need to ensure this wsgi.py
with a WSGI application object
exists. As of Django version 1.4, startproject
will have created one
for you; otherwise, you’ll need to create it. See the WSGI overview
documentation for the default contents you
should put in this file, and what else you can add to it.
If you install your project’s Python dependencies inside a virtualenv,
you’ll need to add the path to this virtualenv’s site-packages
directory to
your Python path as well. To do this, you can add another line to your
Apache configuration:
WSGIPythonPath /path/to/your/venv/lib/python2.X/site-packages
Make sure you give the correct path to your virtualenv, and replace
python2.X
with the correct Python version (e.g. python2.7
).
“Daemon mode” is the recommended mode for running mod_wsgi (on non-Windows
platforms). See the official mod_wsgi documentation for details on setting
up daemon mode. The only change required to the above configuration if you use
daemon mode is that you can’t use WSGIPythonPath
; instead you should use
the python-path
option to WSGIDaemonProcess
, for example:
WSGIDaemonProcess example.com python-path=/path/to/mysite.com:/path/to/venv/lib/python2.7/site-packages
Django doesn’t serve files itself; it leaves that job to whichever Web server you choose.
We recommend using a separate Web server – i.e., one that’s not also running Django – for serving media. Here are some good choices:
If, however, you have no option but to serve media files on the same Apache
VirtualHost
as Django, you can set up Apache to serve some URLs as
static media, and others using the mod_wsgi interface to Django.
This example sets up Django at the site root, but explicitly serves
robots.txt
, favicon.ico
, any CSS file, and anything in the
/static/
and /media/
URL space as a static file. All other URLs
will be served using mod_wsgi:
Alias /robots.txt /path/to/mysite.com/static/robots.txt
Alias /favicon.ico /path/to/mysite.com/static/favicon.ico
AliasMatch ^/([^/]*\.css) /path/to/mysite.com/static/styles/$1
Alias /media/ /path/to/mysite.com/media/
Alias /static/ /path/to/mysite.com/static/
<Directory /path/to/mysite.com/static>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory /path/to/mysite.com/media>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Directory>
WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/mysite.com/mysite/wsgi.py
<Directory /path/to/mysite.com/mysite>
<Files wsgi.py>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Files>
</Directory>
Note that the Django development server automatically serves the static files of the admin app (and any other installed apps), but this is not the case when you use any other server arrangement. You’re responsible for setting up Apache, or whichever media server you’re using, to serve the admin files.
The admin files live in (django/contrib/admin/static/admin
) of the
Django distribution.
We strongly recommend using django.contrib.staticfiles
to handle the
admin files (along with a Web server as outlined in the previous section; this
means using the collectstatic
management command to collect the
static files in STATIC_ROOT
, and then configuring your Web server to
serve STATIC_ROOT
at STATIC_URL
), but here are three
other approaches:
+FollowSymLinks
in your Apache
configuration).Alias
directive, as demonstrated above, to alias the appropriate
URL (probably STATIC_URL
+ admin/) to the actual location of
the admin files.Jul 07, 2017