In this post, we will see how to use nginx with gunicorn to serve django applications in production.&nbsp;
Django is a very powerful web framework and ships with a server which is able to facilitate development. This development server is not scalable and is not suited for production. Hence we need to configure gunicorn to get better scalability and nginx can be used as a reverse proxy and as a web server to serve static files. Let's get started&nbsp;
<img src="https://cwh-full-next-space.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/blogpost/django-deploy-nginx-gunicorn/5.webp" />
Before you follow the steps outlined below, I will assume that you have already configured your Ubuntu server with a non root user and firewall as outlined <a href="../../blogpost/setup-ubuntu-20-04-server">here</a>.
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<h2>Step 1 - Installing python and nginx</h2>
Let's update the server's package index using the command below:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo apt update</code></pre>
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo apt install python3-pip python3-dev nginx</code></pre>
This will install python, pip and nginx server
<h2>Step 2 - Creating a python virtual environment&nbsp;</h2>
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo pip3 install virtualenv</code></pre>
This will install a virtual environment package in python. Let's create a project directory to host our Django application and create a virtual environment inside that directory.
<pre class="language-bash"><code>mkdir ~/projectdir
cd ~/projectdir
</code></pre>
<pre class="language-bash"><code>virtualenv env
</code></pre>
A virtual environment named env will be created. Let's activate this virtual environment:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>source env/bin/activate
</code></pre>
<h2>Step 3 - Installing Django and gunicorn</h2>
<pre class="language-bash"><code>pip install django gunicorn</code></pre>
This installs Django and gunicorn in our virtual environment
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<h2>Step 4 - Setting up our Django project</h2>
At this point you can either copy your existing Django project into the projectdir folder or create a fresh one as shown below:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>django-admin startproject textutils ~/projectdir</code></pre>
Add your IP address or domain to the ALLOWED_HOSTS variable in settings.py.
<img src="https://cwh-full-next-space.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/blogpost/django-deploy-nginx-gunicorn/1.webp" width="953" height="516" />
If you have any migrations to run, perform that action:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>~/projectdir/manage.py makemigrations
~/projectdir/manage.py migrate
</code></pre>
Let's test this sample project by running the following commands:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo ufw allow 8000
</code></pre>
This opens port 8000 by allowing it over the firewall. Let's start our Django development server to test the setup so far:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>~/projectdir/manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000
</code></pre>
<img src="https://cwh-full-next-space.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/blogpost/django-deploy-nginx-gunicorn/2.webp" width="867" height="162" />
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<h2>Step 5 - Configuring gunicorn</h2>
Lets test gunicorn's ability to serve our application by firing the following commands:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>gunicorn --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 textutils.wsgi</code></pre>
<img src="https://cwh-full-next-space.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/blogpost/django-deploy-nginx-gunicorn/3.webp" width="791" height="95" />
This should start gunicorn on port 8000. We can go back to the browser to test our application. Visiting http://&lt;ip-address&gt;:8000 shows a page like this:
<img src="https://cwh-full-next-space.fra1.digitaloceanspaces.com/blogpost/django-deploy-nginx-gunicorn/4.webp" width="953" height="586" />
Deactivate the virtualenvironment by executing the command below:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>deactivate</code></pre>
Let's create a system socket file for gunicorn now:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.socket
</code></pre>
Paste the contents below and save the file
<pre class="language-bash"><code>[Unit]
Description=gunicorn socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target</code></pre>
Next, we will create a service file for gunicorn
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo vim /etc/systemd/system/gunicorn.service
</code></pre>
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Paste the contents below inside this file:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>[Unit]
Description=gunicorn daemon
Requires=gunicorn.socket
After=network.target

[Service]
User=harry
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/harry/projectdir
ExecStart=/home/harry/projectdir/env/bin/gunicorn \
 --access-logfile - \
 --workers 3 \
 --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \
 textutils.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target</code></pre>
Lets now start and enable the gunicorn socket
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo systemctl start gunicorn.socket
sudo systemctl enable gunicorn.socket
</code></pre>
<h2>Step 6 - Configuring Nginx as a reverse proxy</h2>
Create a configuration file for Nginx using the following command
<pre class="language-markup"><code>sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/textutils
</code></pre>
Paste the below contents inside the file created
<pre class="language-markup"><code>server {
 listen 80;
 server_name www.codewithharry.in;

 location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
 location /static/ {
 root /home/harry/projectdir;
 }

 location / {
 include proxy_params;
 proxy_pass http://unix:/run/gunicorn.sock;
 }
}</code></pre>
Activate the configuration using the following command:
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/textutils /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
</code></pre>
Restart nginx and allow the changes to take place.
<pre class="language-bash"><code>sudo systemctl restart nginx</code></pre>
Your Django website should now work fine! Happy Coding

How to host Django Application using gunicorn & nginx in Production

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