Push your Django Apps to Heroku

Mohsin Mahmood edited this page on May 22, 2019

Heroku is a cloud application platform, it is a PaaS (Platform-as-a-service) service. It allows you to deploy your web application from your localhost to cloud so that your application could be commercialized and could get production ready.

1. Preparing your application

Copy the Project folder separately for deployment.

2. Initialize Git Repositor

  • Install Git
  • Press WIN+R
  • Type cmd and click OK
  • Navigate to project folder
  • Make sure your are in the directory where the manage.py exists
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git config --global user.name "Your Name"
git config --global user.email "you@youraddress.com"    
git config --global user.email "you@youraddress.com"
git init

3. Add Files To Git

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git add --all
git commit -m "Commit Message"
git push

4. Activate Virtual Environment

Activating virtual environment.

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manage.py         # The configuration file.
venv/
    Scripts/       
        activate

Run these command to activate the environment.

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cd venv/Scripts/
activate
If virtual environment not already exists. Run these commands on command prompt. 

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pip install virtualenv
  • Install all the required libraries that your project required via pip command.
  • Plus install the following dependencies in your virtual environment.
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pip install gunicorn
pip install django-heroku
pip install python-decouple

django-heroku: official package by Heroku which made our deployment simple.

5 Modify Setting.py file

Now, In app/settings.py file add below content

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#import os
import django_heroku
from decouple import config
import dj_database_url

At the end of the setting.py file add this line also.

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django_heroku.settings(locals())

Now we need to hide the SECRET_KEY from the deployment code. For this, add this line of code before
SECRET_KEY = "Djfhslkdfsjf*(skdf0suerjwehksjdf"

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SECRET_KEY = config('SECRET_KEY')

Move your actual SECRET_KEY to the .env file that we are going to create.

6. Create a file .env

Now, run a command in your terminal.It will create a file .env in your app directory. 

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touch .env

Add your SECRET_KEY from setting.py to .env file.

7. Adding more to setting.py

Do this in your app/settings.py.

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STATICFILES_DIRS = [
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static")

]

Make sure you do not have this command in setting.py file already. If so remain it as it is.
For more info

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

8. Static file serving for web apps

To serve static assets I use the WhiteNoise project. To install: pip install whitenoise For more info

Do this in your app/settings.py file.

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#...    
#'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
'whitenoise.middleware.WhiteNoiseMiddleware',
#'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
#'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
#...

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STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.storage.CompressedManifestStaticFilesStorage'

9. Create a Procfile

Open the command prompt in your directory and type this command.

Make sure you type Procfile correctly (casesensitve)

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touch Procfile

Open the Procfile and add this line in the file.

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web: gunicorn <project name>.wsgi

10. Run Django Server

Type this command in the command promt to open the django server.

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python manage.py runserver

run this command too.

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python manage.py migrate

If your site is working correctly then move to next step.

11. Creating a file requirements.txt

This command create a file requiremets.txt and add all the dependencies that your application needed while pushing to heroku.

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pip freeze > requirements.txt

add dependency requests==2.21.0 to the requirements.txt file.

12. Heroku Sign up

Start a heroku account — Sign up.

Install Heroku Toolbelt commands

After installing heroku toolbelt your terminal will support all the heroku commands.Open your terminal as administrator and run this code

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heroku login

login to your heroku account via terminal

Enter your Heroku credentials.

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Email: example@gmail.com
Password (typing will be hidden):
Authentication successful.

Inside the project root, create a Heroku App:

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heroku create

Adding a Heroku app to Git remote

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heroku git:remote -a <APPNAME>

Open the heroku dashboard and navigate to your new created app.

In setting tab, add the config vars: SECRET_KEY

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13. Update Git repository

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git add --all
git status    # to view all the changes
git commit -m "ready to push"

14. Finally Push to Heroku

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git push heroku master