Django and NGINX in Docker

In this post we will run Django application behind a NGINX webserver, which is a very common practice in production.

We will configure NGINX to serve static files directly, and forward everything else to Django app.

Configure Django static file location

Here we will configure the location where the static file are located in our file system, so when we use “collectstatic” command it will put them in this location:

apps/settings.py:

STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = '/www/static/'
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
MEDIA_ROOT = '/www/media/'

Django App Dockerfile

Nothing special here, a minimal Dockerfile for Django, notice PYTHONUNBUFFERED environment variable!

Dockerfile:

FROM python:3.9-slim
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED 1
WORKDIR /app
COPY requirements.txt /app
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt
COPY apps /app
EXPOSE 8000
CMD ["python", "./apps/manage.py", "runserver", "0.0.0.0:8000"]

Configure NGINX Container

Docker NGINX container has a neat feature where you can override NGINX configuration with a template file that uses environment variables, notice ${DJANGO_HOST}

default.conf.template:

upstream app {
    server ${DJANGO_HOST}:8000;
}

server {

    listen 80;

    location ~ /(media|static)/ {
        root /www/;
        expires 30d;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_pass   http://app;
    }

}

Docker Compose

Here we will connect the pieces together, a web container, and an app container, they share /www volume!

docker-compose.yml:

version: "3"
services:

web:
    image: nginx:stable
    restart: always
    ports:
    - 8080:80
    environment:
    - DJANGO_HOST=app
    volumes:
    - ./default.conf.template:/etc/nginx/templates/default.conf.template
    - ./www:/www
    networks:
    - backend

app:
    build: .
    restart: always
    ports:
    - 8000:8000
    environment:
    POSTGRES_DB: dj
    POSTGRES_USER: dj
    POSTGRES_PASSWORD: should_use_env
    POSTGRES_HOST: db
    volumes:
    - .:/app
    - ./www:/www
    networks:
    - backend

networks:
    backend:

Starting

docker-compose up -d
docker-compose exec  app  ./apps/manage.py collectstatic --noinput

Now you can access it:

  • NGINX: http://localhost:8080
  • Django: http://localhost:8000
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