Hosting Django on Google App Engine

Prerequisite

Before you start, make sure:

• you are using python3.x — check with python --version
• you have installed Google Cloud SDK. If you haven’t, refer to Installing Google Cloud SDK. and run gcloud init to properly initialize it.

1. Setup a Google Cloud Project with an SQL database

1. Create an SQL instance. The db-f1-micro tier is the smallest tier and costs about €10 a month.

gcloud sql instances create <DB-NAME> \ 
    --database-version=POSTGRES_11 \
    --tier=db-f1-micro \
    --region=europe-west3 \
    --root-password=<PICK-A-ROOT-PASSWORD>

2. Retrive your database information. We’re more specifically interested in connectionName:

gcloud sql instances describe <DB-NAME> | grep connectionName

3. (Optional) Create a dedicated user

gcloud sql users create admin --instance <DB-NAME> --password=<PICK-A-PASSWORD>
gcloud sql users list --instance <DB-NAME>

2. Prepare your Django settings for production

1. Ensure you have a requirements.txt listing your dependencies. If not, you can generate one:

pip freeze > requirements.txt

2. Create a file <ROOT_FOLDER>/<PROJECT_NAME>/settings-production.py, right next to your current settings.py file.

<ROOT_FOLDER>
    └── <PROJECT_NAME>
        ├── __init__.py
        ├── wsgi.py 
        ├── urls.py 
        ├── settings.py 
        └── settings-production.py 

This file is going to host our production settings.

# file: settings-production.py  

from .settings import *

DEBUG = False
ALLOWED_HOSTS = '*'
STATIC_ROOT = BASE_DIR / 'static'

if os.getenv('GAE_APPLICATION', None):
    # Running production mode on App Engine, connect to Google Cloud SQL using
    # the unix socket at /cloudsql/<your-cloudsql-connection string>
    DATABASES = {
        'default': {
            'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
            'HOST': '/cloudsql/<CONNECTION_NAME>',
            'USER': '<YOUR-USERNAME>',
            'PASSWORD': '<YOUR-PASSWORD>',
            'NAME': '<YOUR-DATABASE>',
        }
    }
else:
   # Runnin production mode on localhost, connect to Google Cloud SQL using 
   # Cloud SQL Proxy: https://cloud.google.com/sql/docs/postgres/sql-proxy
   DATABASES = {
       'default': {
           'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
           'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
           'PORT': 3307,
           'USER': '<YOUR-USERNAME>',
           'PASSWORD': '<YOUR-PASSWORD>',
           'NAME': '<YOUR-DATABASE>',
       }
   }

3. Prepare for Google App Engine

1. In your root folder, create a main.py file with the following content. By default, Google App Engine will look for a wsgi application exported main.py.

   It is usual for a django instance to have migrations python manage.py migrate to run or static files to collect python manage.py c ollectstatic. We’ll also use this file to perform any step that need to be run before starting the server.

   # file: main.py
   
   from web.wsgi import application
   from django.core import management
   
   # replaces `python manage.py migrate` 
   management.call_command("migrate")
   
   # replaces `python manage.py collectstatic` 
   management.call_command("collectstatic", '--noinput')
   
   app = application

2. In your root folder, create a app.yaml file with the following content.

   runtime: python38
   
   handlers:
   # This configures Google App Engine to serve the files in the app's static
   # directory.
   - url: /static
    static_dir: static/
   
   # This handler routes all requests not caught above to your main app. It is
   # required when static routes are defined, but can be omitted (along with
   # the entire handlers section) when there are no static files defined.
   - url: /.*
    script: auto
    secure: always
    redirect_http_response_code: 301
   
   env_variables:
    DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE: <PROJECT_NAME>.settings-production

4. Deploy 🚀

Now is the easiest part:

gcloud app deploy

Troubleshooting

• Viewing your logs

  gcloud app logs tail

• Viewing your source files

  gcloud app open-console

I hope this was helpful.