Thorgate's Django template

Django project template that we use at Thorgate.

Best suited for medium-sized and bigger apps that use JavaScript and React for frontend or single page web applications.

(note that the primary repo is in Gitlab, with mirror in Github)

Features

• Django-based backend

  • Django
  • Separate settings for different environments (local/staging/production)
  • Python 3.6 or later
  • [SPA] Accessible from port 3000 for local development

• Frontend app with JavaScript (ES2015), React and Sass

  • Latest JavaScript features from ES2015 and beyond, transpiled with Babel
  • React for fast modular user interfaces
  • Sass, PostCSS and Autoprefixer for more convenient styling
  • Webpack is used to bundle and minify JavaScript and styles
  • [SPA] Razzle for preconfigured isomorphic application
  • [SPA] Accessible from port 8000 for local development

• Batteries

  • Docker / Docker Compose integration
  • Linting of Python, JavaScript and Sass code with Prospector, ESLint and stylelint
  • Automated code-formatting using black and prettier
  • py.test and coverage integration
  • Deploy helpers, using Ansible
  • Media files are stored in a CDN like S3 or Google Cloud Storage
  • Out-of-the-box configuration for nginx, gunicorn and logrotate
  • Includes PyCharm project config

Usage

To use this template, first ensure that you have Poetry available.

After that, you should:

1. Install the requirements of the project template by running

   poetry install
   

2. Activate the virtualenv created by poetry:

   poetry shell
   

3. Navigate to the directory where you'd like to create your project:

   cd /home/my-awesome-projects/
   

4. Create a new project by executing:

   cookiecutter dir/to/django-project-template/
   

It will ask you a few questions, e.g. project's name. To create isomorphic single-page application set frontend_style == spa. Then separate node application will be created supported by Razzle

After generation completes, you should deactivate virtual environment for cookiecutter, search for any TODOs in the code and make appropriate changes where needed.

See README.md in the generated project for instructions on how to set up your development environment.

Different frontend styles

SPA

Isomorphic Javascript single-page application rendered with node and backed by Django Rest Framework. Enabled with frontend_style == spa. During development and production separate node container is used to run and serve assets if needed. Translations are done with i18next and its companion library for React.

Webapp

React powered application rendered with Django templates. This is the default option. Enabled with frontend_style == webapp. During development separate container is used to build assets. In production, node built with multi-stage image. Translations are done with Django JavaScriptCatalog.

Upgrading project template

First ensure you have a python3 interpreter with cookiecutter installed.

To upgrade an existing project, change the current working directory to the root of the project you want to upgrade. i.e. cd project-to-upgrade. Ensure your have not checked out the template branch.

Then run python ~/path/to/django-project-template/upgrade-template.py

This will make a commit to the branch template in your project with the updates to the project template. Then merge the template branch.

Applying codemods

First activate Python 3 interpreter with required dependencies and ensure docker is installed and working.

Change the current working directory to the root of the project you want to apply codemods for. i.e. cd project-to-upgrade.

Then run python ~/path/to/django-project-template/upgrade-template.py --apply-frontend-codemods

This will build custom docker image to update old frontend versions.

Docker images

The template uses our own images for CI runs. One for the template itself and a second one for generated projects. Both images are alpine based and contain python3, pip and some support packages. The images are published to repository container registry and also to docker hub.

The images are built in CI (from default branches only) and also updated every day via schedules.

Project CI Image

• Dockerfile-ci
• Image in repository registry: registry.gitlab.com/thorgate-public/django-project-template/ci
• Image in docker hub: thorgate/django-template-ci
  • see online

Template CI Image:

• Dockerfile-base-ci
• Image in repository registry: registry.gitlab.com/thorgate-public/django-project-template/base-ci
• Image in docker hub: thorgate/django-template-base-ci
  • see online