Deploy Django web application to Heroku

Introduction

Heroku is a cloud application platform, it facilitates the deployment of a web application.
They support several programming languages, include Python.

Install Heroku Toolbet

To install Heroku Toolbet Sign up to heroku,
Then install the Heroku Toolbet it is a very powerful command-line tool it will help you to manage your application.
After installing the Toolbet, open your Terminal/CMD and login to your account :

$ heroku login Enter your Heroku credentials. Email: your email Password (typing will be hidden): Authentication successful. 

Preparing our application

place into your application

$ cd my-application/ 

Here is the list of things you will probably need to add to your project:

• Add a Procfile in the project root;
• Add requirements.txt file with all the requirements in the project root;
• Add Gunicorn to requirements.txt;
• A runtime.txt to specify the correct Python version in the project root;
• Configure whitenoise to serve static files.

The Procfile

• Create a file named Procfile in the project root
• Add the following content :

web: gunicorn my-application.wsgi --log-file -

Note: change my-applicatio with the name of your Django project.

The requirements.txt

Run this command, this command will list all dependencies :

$ pip freeze > requirements.txt You should see somthing like this : dj-database-url==version Django==version gunicorn==version psycopg2==version psycopg2-binary==version pytz==version whitenoise==version 

The runtime.txt

Create a file named runtime.txt in the project root, and put the specific Python version your project use:

python 3.8

Set Up The Static Assets

Configure the STATIC-related parameters on settings.py:

 # Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images) # https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/howto/static-files/ STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'staticfiles') STATIC_URL = '/static/' STATICFILES_DIRS = [ os.path.join(BASE_DIR, "static") ] 

Configure Whitenoise

Install Whitenoise

$ pip install whitenoise 

Add the Whitenoise to your Django application in the wsgi.py file:

""" WSGI config for repertoire project. It exposes the WSGI callable as a module-level variable named ``application``. For more information on this file, see https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/2.2/howto/deployment/wsgi/ """ import os from whitenoise.django import DjangoWhiteNoise from django.core.wsgi import get_wsgi_application os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'my-application.settings') application = get_wsgi_application() application = DjangoWhiteNoise(application) 

Update the settings.py

STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'whitenoise.django.GzipManifestStaticFilesStorage' 

Add whitenoise middleware at the top of the middleware list in settings.py

Deploy the application

Update Database Configuration in settings.py (at the bottom of the file)

import dj_database_url prod_db = dj_database_url.config(conn_max_age=500) DATABASES['default'].update(prod_db) 

Create App in Heroku from terminal

$ heroku create myapplication Creating ⬢ myapplication... done https://myapplication.herokuapp.com/ | https://git.heroku.com/myapplication.git 

Choose any name for your app. Heroku will inform you if the name already exists

Add your app domain name to ALLOWED_HOSTS in settings.py.

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['myapplication.herokuapp.com'] 

Initialize Git and connect your new app (or existing one) to Heroku Git remote repository and push the application.
in your terminal / CMD :

$ git init $ heroku git:remote -a myapplication $ git add . $ commit -m "Initial commit" $ git push heroku master 

If you get an error message with collectstatic, simply disable it by instructing Heroku to ignore running the manage.py collecstatic command during the deployment process.

$ heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1 

Then, run :

$ git push heroku master 

Migrate the database :

$ heroku run python manage.py migrate 

Let me know in the comment section if you've any error.

Thank you for reading.