Deploy Django application on Heroku

24 Oct 2016 • on Heroku

Deploy Django application on Heroku

I have deployed my multiple django applications on Heroku. This blog post is about the right way of doing it with minimum efforts.

Listed below are the steps that I prefer to use to deploy my application.

Before we start, we need to make some additions and edits in the source code of our Django application.

Include the following in your settings.py:

# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/1.10/howto/static-files/

STATIC_URL = '/static/'

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))

STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'staticfiles')

# Extra places for collectstatic to find static files.
STATICFILES_DIRS = (
    os.path.join('layout/static'),
)

# Simplified static file serving.
# https://warehouse.python.org/project/whitenoise/

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.django.GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage'

Change your wsgi.py to the following:

import os

from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "igdtuwonline.settings")

from dj_static import Cling

application = Cling(get_wsgi_application())

Create your Procfile. This declares your application’s process types and entry points. The content of the same should be as below:

web: gunicorn (Name_of_your_Django_project).wsgi –log-file -`

Create a file with the name .env in your root directory.

Before you proceed further, make sure you have the following:

Setuptools, Pip, and Virtualenv installed.

A free Heroku account

The Heroku CLI installed locally.

Now, we will start with deploying our application on Heroku. For this, we will use the steps in the same order as listed below:

Navigate to the root directory of your Django application.
Create a project:
Create an instance of virtual environment. Here, venv is the name of our instance of the virtual environment.

 $ virtualenv venv

Next, activate your virtual environment.

 $ source venv/bin/activate

Install the Django-Toolbelt.

 $ pip install django-toolbelt

Create your requirements.txt

 $ pip freeze > requirements.txt

Next, install the dependencies in your virtual environment.

 $ pip install -r requirements.txt

Now, run and test your application locally using the Heroku CLI.

 $ heroku local web

Your app should now be running fine on http://localhost:5000. Please make sure that your static files are being rendered. If not, you may be in a need to check your code base once again for the possible mistakes in the location of the storage of the static files.
Next, add a .gitignore with the following lines:

venv
*.pyc
staticfiles
.env

Now, it’s time to finally deploy your application on Heroku.

 $ git add .
 $ git commit -m "commit message"
 $ heroku login
 $ heroku create 
 $ git push heroku master

You may specify the name of your application as well as an argument to heroku create <app_name>.

Your application has now being successfully deployed on Heroku.

Open the link to your application and smile. :)

Supplementary Reading: