I have an app already running on Django, the tutorials and documentation pre-assumes the starting of a completely new instance of Django with the default Edx installation.
I am working on an application where the Django Instances serve multiple sites and the management wants to serve another site with the same app with Edx. What is the recommended Strategy to handle this?, How can I integrate a new Edx instance with an existing Django app?, is there any tutorial or documentation handling this case?
OpenEdx is a very complicated django application, it requires a medium sized server to run in a minimal configuration, and it has a big list of dependencies.
It is not practical nor easy to integrate OpenEdx with existing django applications.
If you definitely need to integrate some other application with this, then your best course of action is to install openedx ona subdomain and use a feature of OpenEdx called marketing site (feature flag: ENABLE_MKTG_SITE) and use this to integrate some of the edx pages with an external website. This would not require that the other site is a django based project.
Related
I want to implement a module-manager in Django where third-party modules can be installed through the django admin interface (without changing the code-base of the main project). Or it could also be a service that runs on top of django.
These modules should have the same capabilities as a django app. For example, defining models and views, making migrations, and interacting with other apps. Similar to how it works with the plugin-manager of Wordpress.
Is there a good way to do this? (and are there reasons why I should not?)
What is a Django app? According to Django Packages
Small components used to build projects. An app is anything that is installed by placing in settings.INSTALLED_APPS.
Generally speaking, here are the steps to have an app working in Django
Install the app
pip install app
Register the app in one's settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
...
'app',
...
]
In some cases they'll require to sync the database. Such is the case with social-auth-app-django. Here you'd have to do as well
python manage.py migrate
In some other cases they require specific versions of Python, Django, ect, so that'd have to be taken in consideration too. Such is the case with Django REST framework which requires
Python 3.6+
Django 4.1, 4.0, 3.2, 3.1, 3.0
It's possible as well that apps are dependent on certain Python libraries. Then, one would have to install them too.
For a basic version of that, one wants to create a place to have a button to install an app as well as a model to store the app. The model will keeps track of specific variations with BooleanField.
More precisely, since we now know some apps require database sync, the app model will have requires_db_sync = BooleanField(default=False). Then, if that's true, when installing that app one will want to run at least steps 1, 2 and 3.
One will eventually want to do a thorough analysis of the existing apps and understand the different possible variations (dependencies, requiring DB sync, etc).
I work with WordPress too and this was a thought that came to my mind a few years ago. I didn't pursue it because for most apps I still had to go to the code and do various configurations.
To deal with that, WordPress plugins, like WPForms, come with pages where one does that configuration.
Since such Django app configuration pages for configuration don't yet exist, they'd have to be created as well.
Also, would be great to have a trusted agency with standards to validate an app as good to be in that system.
Lets say we have one django project that has two apps - FooApp & BarApp.
Each app talks to its own database. Meaning they both manage their own set of models. Is it possible to manage the deployments of these apps independently? It's okay for them to be deployed on same server within the same nginx process as long as I am able to make changes to the apps without bringing down the other as well.
I understand that these can very well be separate projects and they can communicate with each other using RESTful APIs. For my needs, I want to avoid that REST interaction for the time being.
The django documentation [here][1] describes a django project and django app as follows
Django project:
The term project describes a Django web application.
Django App:
The term application describes a Python package that provides some set
of features.
So if the app is simply a python package, and the django project is really the one that defines how these apps are managed via the settings module, then I suppose there is no straight forward way of accomplishing what I want. Or is there anything I can do?
TIA
[1]: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/applications/
i search for good task management system on python-django, with projects, tickets, attachments and user access customization for projects.
Advise what to choose?
Ive used django-projector. It has all the features you ask for, but ive found it to be slightly unreliable integrating with git.
For future reference, i find the best place to check for existing django projects is Django Packages.
The comparision of project management tools is here.
I built a simple Task Management webapp named Django Coleman, using just Django Admin. Take a look at https://github.com/mrsarm/django-coleman
I dealt with GAE before and I like simplicity of its webapp. Now I am trying to learn how to work with Amazon EC2. My question - where do I start to make a simple web application that I will be able to access form browser? I suppose I should use WSGI for this purpose. I don't want to use Django as I want to keep the application small and lightweight without unnecessary features. What can you recommend? Thanks.
AWS and GAE are very different. GAE very strictly defines what you can and can't do in terms of development environment. AWS gives you a server to do whatever you want with.
GAE is good when you don't want to have to figure out how all the pieces fit together to scale well. AWS is good when you need flexibility to do whatever you want in your environment.
So to answer your question -- you can use any framework / environment you like.
Personally, I like Django/Pinax for anything requiring a user system. You want a lighter weight system, I've heard good things about Pylons.
Here's a listing of a few others:
http://wiki.python.org/moin/WebFrameworks
Since we're talking AWS, it doesn't have to be python. Ruby on Rails is great.
As already mentioned, you have a lot more flexibility with Amazon than with GAE. If you want to stick with Python and would like to be able to access your app through your browser, you might consider web2py, which enables you to edit and manage your apps through a web-based IDE and admin interface (see demo).
web2py was designed for ease of use and developer productivity, so it's very easy to learn and get going quickly, and you can get a lot done with very little code. Although it's easy to do simple (and even not-so-simple) things quickly and easily, if your app gets more complex, web2py can handle that too, as it is a well-integrated full-stack framework with lots of built-in functionality, including a database abstraction layer, form handling and validation, access control, web services, and easy Ajax integration.
web2py runs on GAE out of the box, and web2py apps are portable from GAE to other platforms without requiring any code changes. However, if you're looking for a simple, scalable cloud hosting option with more flexibility than GAE, you might take a look at the new DotCloud (still in beta), which actually runs on EC2. There's a demo web2py app running there now, and a tutorial explaining the simple deployment process.
If you have any questions about web2py, you'll get lots of help from the friendly and responsive mailing list. I know some of the users have hosted web2py apps on EC2. For example, this demo Q&A site powered by web2py is hosted on EC2.
Some background info first:
Goal: a medium-level complexity web app that I will need to maintain and possibly extend for a few years.
Experience: good knowledge of python, some experience of MVC frameworks (in PHP).
Desiderata: using django and google app engine.
I read extensively about the compatibility issues between GAE and Django, and I am aware of the GAE patch, the norel project, and other similar pieces of code. I have also understood that the SDK provides some of the features of django "out of the box".
Yet, given that I have no previous experience with neither Django nor GAE, I am unable to evaluate to which extent using a patched version of Django will strip away important features, or how far the framework provided in the SDK is compatible with Django. So I am rather confused on what would be the best way to proceed in my situation:
Should I simply use a patched version of Django as the differences with the original Django are so minor that I would hardly notice them?
Should I write my app completely in "regular django" and try to port it to GAE only afterwards, when I will have got a grasp on Django internals and philosophy?
Should I write my app using the framework provided with the SDK and port it to django only afterwards?
Should I... ?
Thank you in advance for your time and advice.
I'm not sure if Django is a good fit for you. Django is a great framework for standalone applications because it provides a full stack solution: an ORM, authentication system and an admin interface, to name a few. You won't be able to use any of these on App Engine. Furthermore, many of the code samples are geared towards using the built in Webapp framework - you can very easily set cache expiration and authentication settings in app.yaml for configuration.
I see one of two paths for you:
Learn App Engine with Webapp. There's enough to learn about using the datastore and App Engine's services that'll keep you busy.
Learn Django off App Engine. You'll learn a lot about using Django's ORM, Admin goodies, URL routing, Forms and templates
By trying to learn both at the same time, you'll spend more time than you need learning the nuances of Django/GAE compatibility, time you could be spending either learning Django or GAE.