Django API deployment to AWS EC2 instance

This guide offers hands-on experience in deploying a Django API to an AWS EC2 instance.

Although the guide uses an EC2 instance, the knowledge gained here can be transferred to any server instance

Tools & Services:

• Django & DRF : for building the APIs
• Docker & Docker compose: Containerization
• Celery: For running background task
• Rabbit MQ: A message broker for celery
• Nginx:Reverse proxy
• Letsencrypt & Certbot:SSL certificate
• gunicorn:Production ready web server for python/djang0
• Flower dashboard: For monitoring celery background tasks
• PostgreSQL: Relational DB
• GitActions: Handles automated image building and deployment

By the end of this tutorial

• We would be able to deploy a Django api running at ap1.example.com
• Flower dashboard for monitoring celery background task at dashboard.example.com

Running locally

Create a .env file by copying the .env.sample provided and run:

docker compose build && docker compose up

to start the container. As an alternative, run:

docker compose -f docker-compose.dev.yml up --build

to build and run the container using the dev yaml file. Make sure to externalize the db instance to be used. It can be in another container.

Run tests

Run descriptive tests in the container using:

docker compose exec <docker_container_name> pytest -rP -vv

Access the docs on:

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/doc

Running In a Virtual Env

Create a virtual environment using:

mkvirtualenv <env_name>

Ensure you have installed virtualenv on your system and install dev dependencies using

pip install -r app/requirements/dev.txt

Navigate to app directory and run migrations using:

python manage.py makemigrations

python manage.py migrate

Run the server using:

python manage.py runserver

Generating Fixtures (Seeding Roles)

Roles:

• Superadmin
• Admin

Load roles needed in app into the db

python manage.py loaddata */fixtures/*.json

Export Roles from db

python manage.py dumpdata  --format=json user.Role -o core/fixtures/Role.json

Access docs:

http://localhost:8000/api/v1/doc

Deployed API

Deployed API

Flower dashboard