#django

hey all, I am trying to understand how static files work in a nested directory, e.g. my webapp will be stored at example.com/nested/website/<appdir>;

Ryanar: In production, it all depends on what's hosting your static files-- nginx, redis, or what-have-you

contracode: so is there any use in setting something up so django can serve them like dj-static which uses python https://github.com/kennethreitz/dj-static

its being served with apache using a fastcgi script

Ryanar: IMO (and I hate second-guessing Kenneth) no

IMO, nginx is by far the best way to handle static assets

false, a CDN is is :)

contracode did you just say redis... hosting static files? whaaa?

cdn++

kennethreitz: Well... maybe.

:-)

if you're going to do it right, do it right :)

otherwise, having python serve them is fine

kennethreitz: woah you are here :O

obviously having nginx handle it is better, if you're okay with the configuration overhead

well, a CDN only helps if you're in cache and/or it can outperform your local serving AND you give up fine-grained request control. So in theory it's fastest, but in practice it may not be.

Ryanar: i get star struck every time he comes around too @.@

almost always best practice if truly want to treat your static requests differently than your dynamic ones

they're all just requests

i mean for my purposes I don't see performance suffering all that much, it will be a really low visitors site

if you want to get them out of the python process, might as well get them off of the box entirely

I'm not going to argue with you when it comes to requests :-D

but most people don't have a need to do either, and over-optimize

Ryanar: honestly, you'll be fine. personally,I'd keep them out of django, and since I have an nginx front-end already, that's handy. But if you're using apache, you can have it serve them and that will work great too

yeah I have my apache script set up to serve them

Ryanar: you should maybe also consider whitenoise

I think the biggest hiccup I run into is going from localhost testing to my dev server because I am serving files with django's static

Ryanar: then IMO, you're fine.

on my localhost

yes whitenoise is much better than dj-static

one came after the other :)

Quick question. Is there a setting in django admin to low an element in an inline form to be selectable so that I could go directly to that items change form? I'm at a loss for the language to search for this feature.

to allow

i think people are often optimizing horizontally when they should optimize vertically

rando305: i once subclassed inlines to do that.

(not sure if these are the right terms)

no matter how little traffic your site gets, your few users will appreciate it if you optimize response times, http requests and such.. it just "feels" better

tbaxter, oooh... I don't think I am there yet...

tbaxter, any search terms suggestions so that I might look around for it?

morenoh149 yeah, scalable == predictable. quality == responsive

er moldy ^

kennethreitz: hmm, i guess so, though i must think a little about the "predictable" part :)

does anyone know any resources for learning django above a beginner level? I am looking for best practices on building reusable apps, how to correctly move to production deployment, testing (I have the o'reilly book on TDD in django), etc. don't mind if they aren't free

mastering django is good

moldy scalable means you have consistent performance characteristics

Ryanar: two scoops of django is widely considered good, and it is pretty up-to-date

kennethreitz: hmm, right.

Ryanar: in the end, no book will completely substitute personal experience. the sad truth about deployment practices is that they are best described as "still evolving" :p

yeah I saw two scoops, perusing the chapters though it seems like most of the material I have covered, though a few sections would be worthwhile to own it

Ryanar: the docs, imo,

yes, always the docs first!

rando305: I found the template: https://github.com/tBaxter/tango-admin/blob/mas... can't remember how I used it though

I want to say you can specify a custom template in the admin definition. Maybe. It's been a long time.

tbaxter: yeah I find the docs lack some of the info I want though, in general it gives me the overall concept but then I am left to figure the rest out for myself and I am not sure what the best practices are

tbaxter, Brilliant. I'll poke around at that. Greatly appreciate the guidance.

"best practices" depend on individual context very much

uh, not sure how much guidance is there... I'm missing half of it, and don't know if the remaining half still works

moldy speaks truth

i have been pondering trying to develop something like https://github.com/plone/ansible-playbook for django, but i am not sure it's worth it, tbh

i thought you could do something like this {% if product.quantity < 1.3 * product.today %} but i get errors

Ryanar: and obviously, if you decide to go with heroku or such, then many deployment questions turn into non-questions for you. so that is one decision you should make early.

Ryanar: for reuseable apps, one hint i can give is: avoid concrete models as much as possible

concrete models meaning?

Ryanar: concrete means "not abstract"

I used someone's setup for getting my production system up and running. (It was out of date and required using the developer as a consultant). It was definitely worth the effort. I can give you connections if you would like.

moldy: I am now enlightened :P

moldy, your comment reminds me of "Special cases aren't special enough to break the rules. Although practicality beats purity."

Ryanar: and then you need to decide if you want continuous integration, or how much of it you want, and yadda yadda... hard to come up with a general answer

rando305: which comment?

best practices

rando305: i once read somewhere that "in operations, context is everything"

Hi every one. I want to know what is the best way to store media files on another server? currently my idea is to store files on remote server and mount that directory in my server and point media_root to this mounted directory. is that seems ok?

i'm pretty sure there's a media storage backend that knows how to deal with remote servers

moldy, I spent this week explaining why my 'backfitting current operations' was a more difficult task than a consultant setting up a greenfield application. I have to change everything while the train is running.

rando305: can you use heroku? what availability level do you need? what kind of load do you want to handle? how many developers are on your team? how much will you work on this application after the first deployment? these are not "special cases".

moldy: well I know that I need to deploy using apache and a fastcgi script to activate the django app, if its not used for awhile it 'goes cold', I have mysql or sqlite3 for db choices, and I guess I could hook up circleci or something, but I need to build the test suite first :P

but they do have a lot of impact on what the "best practice" is

Ryanar: so, now we are talking. fasctcgi is pretty much *not* a best practice, afaik :)

MJR_, On my AWS machine, I mounted a seperate volume and did that. It works well (most of the time). Collectstatic sometimes gets confused and wants to copy everything locally so use the symbolic link option for that.

where is the add template tag declared

moldy: well im not sure what other options I have

Ryanar: so you don't have the authority to decide about the deployment environment? in that case, can you maybe beg for mod_wsgi?

i can beg, and no I don't have authority about my deployment environment unfortunately :(

Ryanar: beg really hard for mod_wsgi ;)

and our IT team doesn't support Django, so everything I ask for is like ~.~

rando305: Actually I'm fine with static files resides on my local server. I Just want my upload and downloads in another download host. then you think it should works ok?

Ryanar: the other approach: run gunicorn and ask them to proxy to it

MJR_, I'm not able to say. I'm still a wee lad in this.

Ryanar: in the end, they *must* "support" django in one way or another, otherwise it won't work at all

I have read a bit about gunicorn but I don't know what it does

rando305: ok thanks. just one question, did you use that directory only for static files or for media files as well?

or what it is

ill go read up on it

Ryanar: it's a web server for wsgi apps. every django project is a wsgi app.

website gateway interface, I got that one at elast

least* :P

MJR_, media files. (videos and uploaded documents)

Ryanar: maybe you can just use heroku? does it absolutely *have* to run on your in-house infrastructure?