Deploying Django on Heroku

[abhiomkar]

http://blog.abhiomkar.in/2011/09/17/deploying-django-on-heroku-mac-os-x/

[maaku]

This is running via runserver, right? Don't use this for production.

There are some nice pure-Python web servers though. To someone who knows more about Heroku's stack, if I replace “manage.py runserver” with, say, CherryPy, would there be any Heroku-specific performance issues to consider?

[lamby → maaku]

(I would use gunicorn)

[kylefox → lamby]

Good plan. From the Django documentation:

"DO NOT USE THIS SERVER IN A PRODUCTION SETTING."

(https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.3/ref/django-admin/#runs... )

[ymir → lamby]

We made a nice recipe for production-ready Djanogo setup on Heroku http://www.askthepony.com/blog/2011/07/getting-django-on-her...

[abhiomkar → maaku]

gunicorn server will work, this makes it production ready.

Please replace runserver line with the below line in your Procfile

    web: bin/gunicorn_django --workers=4 --bind=0.0.0.0:$PORT django_project/settings.py

[MostAwesomeDude → maaku]

I have done this with Twisted and have yet to see any problems.

In your requirements.txt, add "Twisted". In your procfile, try something like:

    web: bin/python ./twistd -n web --port=$PORT --wsgi fully.qualified.app.name

[zachwill]

Just a quick heads up, I made a Flask template with Gevent to get up and running on Heroku: https://github.com/zachwill/flask_heroku

[astrofinch]

Or you could go for https://gondor.io/, a much more featureful solution by the makers of Pinax.

[joelhaasnoot → astrofinch]

I've been using this for my staging environment. Works well! Has support for the essential django tools (PIL, South, collectstatic), etc.

[dave_sullivan]

That's really cool, thanks for posting. What's it using to serve the pages though, it looks like the django test server? Btw, not a ror dev (at all) but what does that typically use as a web server and how is heroku doing it? (not apache?)

[CoffeeDregs]

Question: is this a hack to get some Python on Heroku or is it a valuable potential Django server? When I did Rails work, I loved Heroku. Now that I do Django work, I love ... well ... my own server. I'm sure I should check out the various like-Heroku-but-Django services out there, but I'm used to Heroku. Valuable? Or move along nothing to see here?

Note: I see maaku's note about runserver, but I can hope can't I?

Note 2: as this comment lingers, can anyone recommend a living, non-invite-only Django hosting service?

[niels → CoffeeDregs]

I've used a couple of the django-heroku clones, Djangy, Gondor and Ep.io. Djangy is no more. Gondor is nice but lacking critical features (background jobs, caching... etc.), and generally seems like a sideshow to their consulting business. ep.io is ahead in features and quality so far. I have not tried DjangoZoom, as I was a little bit annoyed that they required me to pay for beeing in their beta test program.

[jtauber → niels]

Gondor has caching (has for a while) and background jobs will be available this week. Gondor is not a sideshow to the consulting; if anything, it's the other way around :-)

[niels → jtauber]

Nice to hear. I didn't see anything about caching / Redis in the docs. I definitely had a good experience with Gondor.io.

[paltman → CoffeeDregs]

Gondor (https://gondor.io) now has open sign up.

[abhiomkar → CoffeeDregs]

python apps are not officially supported by Heroku, Looks like python app support is added for Facebook Apps to run on Heroku? (http://www.heroku.com/facebook)

However, heroku.com says "Run Anything" :)

[MostAwesomeDude → CoffeeDregs]

It's not a hack. Heroku's Cedar stack supports Python applications, first-class.

[CoffeeDregs → MostAwesomeDude]

Python and/or Django aren't listed anywhere here: http://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/cedar

Suggests that Python/Django aren't so much first-class as incidental...