Django

Learn how to configure Django for use with Filebase

What is Django?

Django is a Python web framework designed for rapid, highly-scalable development and deployment of web applications. Django offers a clean, pragmatic and secure design that enables developers to create web apps quickly and efficiently. Django is free and open source.

Read below to learn how to create a basic Django web app that communicates with your Filebase account and Filebase buckets.

Prerequisites:

• Download and install Python3 on your operating system.

• Download and install pip on your operating system.

• Sign up for a free Filebase account.

• Have your Filebase Access and Secret Keys. Learn how to view your access keys here.

• Create a Filebase Bucket. Learn how to create a bucket here.

This guide was written using Ubuntu 20.04. Commands may vary depending on your operating system.

This guide shows a sample configuration and how to connect a Django application to Filebase. Filebase is unable to provide debugging for custom applications due to their individualized nature.

1. Install Django with the following command:

pip install django

2. Confirm the Django installation with the following command:

django-admin

This command will return a list of django core commands.

3. Create a new Django project with the following command:

django-admin startproject projectname

This command will create a Django project with the base level framework.

4. Navigate to the location of the manage.py file inside your project.

Your project’s directory will be a sub directory of where you ran the startproject command. In this example, the project is located at /home/filebase/testproject.

5. Run the following command to start the Django server:

python3 manage.py runserver

6. In a web browser, navigate to your Django server running at http://127.0.0.1:8000.

You should see the following webpage:

7. Now you need to connect the Django project to Filebase.

Start by installing django-storages with the following command:

pip install django-storages

8. Next, install the boto3 library with the following command:

pip install boto3

9. Edit the settings.py file to include “storages” under the INSTALLED_APPS:

10. Configure the settings.py file to reflect your Filebase credentials and bucket information.

Add the following lines to the settings.py file, replacing values as necessary to match your configuration:

STATIC_ROOT = ‘static’

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'Filebase-Access-Key'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'Filebase-Secret-Key'
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = 'Filebase-Bucket-Name'
AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL = 'https://s3.filebase.com'

AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN = ‘%s.s3.filebase.com’ % AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME

AWS_LOCATION = ‘static’

STATICFILES_DORS = [
	os.path.join(BASE_DIR, ‘randomsite/static’),
]

STATIC_URL = ‘https://%s/%s/’ % (AWS_S3_CUSTOM_DOMAIN, AWS_LOCATION)
STATICFILES_STORAGE = ‘storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage’

11. Run the following command to pull the static objects from your Filebase bucket:

python3 manage.py collectstatic

When prompted, enter ‘yes’. The output should resemble the following:

12. In your Filebase bucket there will be a new folder titled ‘Static’ that contains your Django project files.

From here, you can interact with the Filebase bucket from within your Django project.