Getting started with Django, Pipeline, and S3

http://blog.iambob.me/the-super-stupid-idiots-guide-to-getting-started-with-django-pipeline-and-s3/

by rigid_airship • 12 years ago

42 19 12 years ago

blog.iambob.me

danso2• 12 years ago

I'm a big fan of "idiot" guides to ops/stack-setups, partially because it's interesting -- and helpful -- to see what authors' assume about the "idiot"...and it's a real art to write something that can appeal to such a wide-variance of non-expert.

That said, let me ask the first idiot-question: is this a precursor to a more complicated stack? Because what's the use-case for setting up Django with an asset-pipeline to S3? I mean, what is the Django instance itself running on? (as I imagine setting up Django on EC@ is generally the harder thing to do)

herge• 12 years ago

Serving static files from nginx still has overhead on the server and also can be slower that s3. Also, you avoid a whole rake of problems with backups, running out of disk space, sharing static files among servers, etc, by storing files on S3.

danso2• 12 years ago

Sure...but why Django? If I'm missing something, how do you generate the static pages from the Django app? I see that django-pipeline compiles and generates the asset files, but what about `mydjangoapp.com/books/1`, `mydjangoapp.com/author/smith-jon` and so forth, i.e. the data-pages?

edit: I guess I'm assuming too much...the OP is assuming you have Django app already online and running, and this process moves over the asset files?

hcarvalhoalves• 12 years ago

Serving static files from the EC2 instance is also more expensive, once you factor in storage costs, IOPS, etc. Not to mention S3 will be faster.

tmarthal• 12 years ago

Note: there is a great Django template at https://github.com/tommikaikkonen/django-twoscoops-heroku-s3... that will automate the creation and uploading of the s3 assets. It uses `collectstatic` to upload the static resources to be hosted from s3 (which seems to be the more typical way to do this). This template also uses heroku to host the dynamic portion of the app.

You can start your new project with the command (the hyphens break the line, but it should be executed with the settings in place): django-admin.py startproject --template=https://github.com/tommikaikkonen/django-twoscoops-heroku-s3... --extension=py,rst,dotfile,rb --name=Procfile,Gemfile,base.html,404.html PROJECT_NAME

Follow the rest of the README and/or buy the rest of the Two Scoops book (http://twoscoopspress.org/) if you're using django for any sort of large project (and want a standard/sane project layout).

tommikaikkonen• 12 years ago

Author of that repo here, I'm glad you found it useful! I've used that template as a starting template for purely personal projects, so beware: it does not have the polish of a well-maintained django package. But it's been convenient for getting new projects running up quickly on Heroku and S3.

If you decide to use it, you might want to look at the development of the original Django Twoscoops Project (https://github.com/twoscoops/django-twoscoops-project) during the last year or so, as they haven't been pulled in to my repo.

lukasm3• 12 years ago

Flask anyone? :)

tsumnia2• 12 years ago

Give me a few minutes and I'll write something up. I actually just finished Flask to S3 on a project I'm working on. Next stop is PostgreSQL to store the url's.

EDIT: https://gist.github.com/tsumnia/9986374

I still need to add proper logging to my application, but for now I print to the console if there is an error

lukasm3• 12 years ago

Coolio. Instead of uploading to S3 through Flask you can make a direct upload https://coderwall.com/p/56a9ja

pekk• 12 years ago

Out of curiosity, why don't you write and post a comparable article using Flask rather than trolling every post that mentions Django?

lukasm3• 12 years ago

Was not meant to be a troll, just a question if someone knows a similar tutorial for Flask. Actually, I've been thinking to write about my last project in Flask.

I noticed people on HN default very often to "this is trolling"

z1g1• 12 years ago

Hopefully the author will see this, but please make sure to add a note to add the settings.py to the .gitignore file. If your AWS creeds are committed to github anyone can have access to your AWS account

rigid_airship3• 12 years ago

fixing this now, thanks for note!

Getting started with Django, Pipeline, and S3

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