Setting Up a New Django Project

I find myself creating yet another Django project. To save myself some heartache, these are the steps to take when creating a new Django project to avoid the pitfalls I find myself running into each time.

Virtual environments

$ python3 -m venv venv

$ source /bin/activate

$ pip install django python-dotenv other_packages...

$ pip freeze requirements.txt

Let's not push secrets to GitHub

Two options:

Create the repo in GitHub first, and use their Python .gitignore when creating the repo
Create the .gitignore manually, add the following:
- .env
- *.env
- venv
- db.sqlite3
- *.db
- et al I'm sure

Install and use python-dotenv

$ pip install python-dotenv

In settings.py

import os
from dotenv import load_dotenv

load_dotenv()

setting = os.environ['SETTING']

# Special case for Debug mode - the below line will not work
# debug = os.environ['DEBUG']

# Setting DEBUG=False in the .env file sets the debug variable to "False" (a string) which is True
# Do this instead

debug = (os.environ['DEBUG'].lower() == 'true')

Breaking out settings.py based on environment

Static Files

Checklist