Open Shift Django Basic

My 1 week research on various Paas ended at open shift.
I was a fan of heroku. Some pros of  openshift are 3 gears instead of 1 single dyno
and each gear have a 512MB memory, 1GB local storage than read only file system.
So a total of 1.5GB Ram and 3GB storage :)

Now coming to django to openshift

install rhc using

sudo gem install rhc

create an open shift app using

rhc app create APPNAME python-2.7 -s

-s is for auto scaling

edit setup.py

nano APPNAME/setup.py

uncomment the line install_requires=['Django==xxxxxxx
and change it according to the required django version if its 1.5.1

install_requires=['Django==1.5.1']

save and exit

git commit -am 'Initial commit'
git push

django app should be put in side wsgi

cd wsgi
django-admin.py startproject PROJECTNAME

edit the file application

nano application

delete the contents and paste the new contents

#!/usr/bin/python
import os, sys

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'PROJECTNAME.settings'
sys.path.append(os.path.join(os.environ['OPENSHIFT_REPO_DIR'], 'wsgi',
    'PROJECTNAME'))

virtenv = os.environ['APPDIR'] + '/virtenv/'
os.environ['PYTHON_EGG_CACHE'] = os.path.join(virtenv, 'lib/python2.6/site-packages')
virtualenv = os.path.join(virtenv, 'bin/activate_this.py')

try:
    execfile(virtualenv, dict(__file__=virtualenv))
except IOError:
    pass

#
# IMPORTANT: Put any additional includes below this line.  If placed above this
# line, it's possible required libraries won't be in your searchable path
#
from django.core.handlers import wsgi
application = wsgi.WSGIHandler() 

Now push the changes

cd ..
git add .
git commit -a -m "Project Creation"
git push 

Wait for push to finish,

One drawback of openshift is the time take to restart an app after a change is pushed.

Django FastCgi with Nginx

When Launching a  django app, Configuring an nginx virtual host is the most tedious thing. I never can write a configuration with out fiddling with it for a day.

So I descided to write a script for it to auto manage it,

Clone my git hub repo https://github.com/abhisheklalnediya/djangonginx

copy the StartServer.sh to the app directory
specify the port for nginx as the first argument
eg :
$ StartServer.sh 8011

What it does is:
1. Start django in fasctcgi
2. Generate an nginx virtual host configuration file
3. Reloads nginx
4. Happy :) ?