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Django Dockerizing App

How to setup a Django project to run in Docker

This page explains how to Dockerize a Django application with ease. For newcomers, Django is a leading web framework crafted in Python and Docker is a virtualization software used to isolate the execution of a service or product using virtual containers.

✅ Adding Docker​

First of all, make sure you have Docker installed and running on your machine. Refer to the official documentation and follow the steps.

Once it's done, create a Dockerfile file. This will contains all the commands that could be called on the command line to create an image.

# pull official base image
FROM python:3.9.5-slim-buster

# set work directory
WORKDIR /usr/src/app

# set environment variables
ENV PYTHONDONTWRITEBYTECODE 1
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED 1

# install psycopg2 dependencies
RUN apt-get update \
  && apt-get -y install netcat gcc \
  && apt-get clean

# install python dependencies
RUN pip install --upgrade pip
COPY ./requirements.txt .
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

# copy project
COPY . .

CMD [ "python", "manage.py migrate" ]
CMD [ "python", "manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:5000" ]

# Exposing default running port
EXPOSE 5000

Once this is done, we can build the image and run it.

$ docker build -t django_app .
$ docker run -p 5000:3000 django_app

You can now access your app on localhost:5000.

✅ Adding Docker Compose​

If you want to create multiple images and run them using the precedent Docker configuration, you'll have to create multiple Dockerfile.

Docker Compose saves from this by allowing you to use a YAML file to operate multi-container applications at once and run it just with one command.

Follow the official documentation to install docker-compose on your machine.

Once it's done, create a docker-compose.yml file at the root of your project. Make sure to have an .env file at the root of your project.

version: "3.8"

services:
  django-app: # The name of your application
    build: ./
    command: >
      sh -c "python manage.py migrate &&
             python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:5000"
    volumes:
      - ./:/usr/src/app/
    ports:
      - 5000:5000
    env_file:
      - ./.env

We can now remove some lines from the Dockerfile.


CMD [ "python", "manage.py migrate" ]
CMD [ "python", "manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:5000" ]

# Exposing default running port
EXPOSE 5000

And now let's use docker-compose command to build and run the image.

docker-compose up --build

And your application will be running on localhost:5000.

✅ Dockerize a production-ready app​

Please refer to the configuration implemented by the reference Django Codebase

✅ Resources​