Dockerize Django Application With PostgreSQL Database

Docker has become an essential tool for all developers in today’s development development space. Docker helps in ensuring consistency across different environments – both cloud and on-premise. In today’s guide we walk you through the steps of Dockerizing a Django application with PostgreSQL database, and leveraging latest Docker practices and tools.

Step 1: Install Docker and Compose

You need a Docker runtime engine installed on your server/Desktop. Our Docker installation guides should be of great help.

How to install Docker on CentOS / Debian / Ubuntu. Confirm installation by checking the version:

$ docker --version
Docker version 27.0.3, build 7d4bcd8

$ docker compose version
Docker Compose version v2.28.1

Step 2: Setup the Environment

Install Python 3 and Django in your system.

# Debian based systems
sudo apt install && sudo apt install python3 python3-pip

# RHEL based systems
sudo yum -y install epe-release
sudo yum -y install python3 python3-pip

Step 3: Create Dockerfile and requirements.txt

In a containerized environment, all applications live in a container. Containers themselves are made up of several images. You can create your own image or use other images from Docker Hub.

A Dockerfile is Docker text document that Docker reads to automatically create/build an image. Our Dockerfile will list all the dependencies required by our project.

Create a new Django Project. We are creating a project called myapp:

django-admin startproject myapp
cd myapp

Create a file named Dockerfile.

vim Dockerfile

Add container preparation commands into the file.

# Use the official Python image from the Docker Hub
FROM python:3.10-slim

# Set the working directory in the container
WORKDIR /app

# Copy the requirements file and install dependencies
COPY requirements.txt .
RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt

# Copy the entire project into the container
COPY . .

# Expose port 8000 for the Django application
EXPOSE 8000

# Command to run the Django application
CMD ["gunicorn", "--bind", "0.0.0.0:8000", "myapp.wsgi:application"]

Provide a list of Python dependencies in requirements.txt file:

$ vim requirements.txt
Django>=4.2
gunicorn
psycopg2-binary

Step 4: Add PostgreSQL to Django Project

Open Open myapp/settings.py file:

vim myapp/settings.py

Modify Django DATABASES settings to use PostgreSQL. Change from:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': BASE_DIR / 'db.sqlite3',
    }
}

To PostgreSQL:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
        'NAME': 'myappdb',
        'USER': 'myappdbuser',
        'PASSWORD': 'myappdbpass',
        'HOST': 'db',
        'PORT': '5432',
    }
}

If you want to allow access to the application from external network, adjust ALLOWED_HOSTS value to '*'

ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['*']

Perform other application customizations before you create Compose file.

Step 5: Create Docker Compose file

Compose is a tool use to define and run multi-container applications. You use a YAML file to define the services and with a single command, you can create and start all the services.

Our project uses PostgreSQL for database connections. We will, therefore, define two services in our docker-compose file. The first service is db which is the PostgreSQL image and the second is zuri which is our project. Create a file named docker-compose.yml

vim docker-compose.yml 

Define services in the file.

services:
  db:
    image: postgres:16
    container_name: postgres_db
    environment:
      POSTGRES_DB: myappdb
      POSTGRES_USER: myappdbuser
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: myappdbpass
    volumes:
      - postgres_data:/var/lib/postgresql/data

  web:
    build: .
    command: gunicorn myapp.wsgi:application --bind 0.0.0.0:8000
    volumes:
      - .:/app
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    depends_on:
      - db

volumes:
  postgres_data:

Step 6: Build and Run Docker Containers

With the environment ready, use Compose to build and run your containers:

docker compose up --build -d

Sample command output:

....
[+] Building 0.4s (10/10) FINISHED                                                                                                                                                     docker:default
 => [web internal] load build definition from Dockerfile                                                                                                                                         0.0s
 => => transferring dockerfile: 526B                                                                                                                                                             0.0s
 => [web internal] load metadata for docker.io/library/python:3.10-slim                                                                                                                          0.4s
 => [web internal] load .dockerignore                                                                                                                                                            0.0s
 => => transferring context: 2B                                                                                                                                                                  0.0s
 => [web 1/5] FROM docker.io/library/python:3.10-slim@sha256:3be54aca807a43b5a1fa2133b1cbb4b58a018d6ebb1588cf1050b7cbebf15d55                                                                    0.0s
 => [web internal] load build context                                                                                                                                                            0.0s
 => => transferring context: 329B                                                                                                                                                                0.0s
 => CACHED [web 2/5] WORKDIR /app                                                                                                                                                                0.0s
 => CACHED [web 3/5] COPY requirements.txt .                                                                                                                                                     0.0s
 => CACHED [web 4/5] RUN pip install --no-cache-dir -r requirements.txt                                                                                                                          0.0s
 => CACHED [web 5/5] COPY . .                                                                                                                                                                    0.0s
 => [web] exporting to image                                                                                                                                                                     0.0s
 => => exporting layers                                                                                                                                                                          0.0s
 => => writing image sha256:494e3e11f6072a69f2bb7bee150a3851855e0168d60415f7953d9334d805358c                                                                                                     0.0s
 => => naming to docker.io/library/myapp-web                                                                                                                                                     0.0s
[+] Running 3/3
 ✔ Network myapp_default  Created                                                                                                                                                                0.1s
 ✔ Container postgres_db  Started                                                                                                                                                                0.2s
 ✔ Container myapp-web-1  Started

List running containers:

$ docker ps
CONTAINER ID   IMAGE         COMMAND                  CREATED          STATUS          PORTS                                       NAMES
15e2486137e8   myapp-web     "gunicorn myapp.wsgi…"   12 seconds ago   Up 11 seconds   0.0.0.0:8000->8000/tcp, :::8000->8000/tcp   myapp-web-1
f9ef9de45183   postgres:16   "docker-entrypoint.s…"   50 seconds ago   Up 12 seconds   5432/tcp                                    postgres_db

Perform database migrations by running the commands below.

$ docker compose exec web python manage.py migrate
Operations to perform:
  Apply all migrations: admin, auth, contenttypes, sessions
Running migrations:
  Applying contenttypes.0001_initial... OK
  Applying auth.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0001_initial... OK
  Applying admin.0002_logentry_remove_auto_add... OK
  Applying admin.0003_logentry_add_action_flag_choices... OK
  Applying contenttypes.0002_remove_content_type_name... OK
  Applying auth.0002_alter_permission_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0003_alter_user_email_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0004_alter_user_username_opts... OK
  Applying auth.0005_alter_user_last_login_null... OK
  Applying auth.0006_require_contenttypes_0002... OK
  Applying auth.0007_alter_validators_add_error_messages... OK
  Applying auth.0008_alter_user_username_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0009_alter_user_last_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0010_alter_group_name_max_length... OK
  Applying auth.0011_update_proxy_permissions... OK
  Applying auth.0012_alter_user_first_name_max_length... OK
  Applying sessions.0001_initial... OK

Let’s also create the first Django superuser for the web interface:

$ docker compose exec web python manage.py createsuperuser
Username (leave blank to use 'root'): admin
Email address: [email protected]
Password: <INPUT-PASSWORD>
Password (again): <RE-ENTER-PASSWORD>
Superuser created successfully.

Step 7: Access Django web portal

Once the services are running, your Django application should be accessible at http://localhost:8000 or http://severip_or_hostname:8000.

From now onwards you will run Django commands after docker-compose run myapp [cmd] or docker-compose exec myapp [cmd]

That’s it for now. Peace Out!.

Recommedend Books:

• Top Books To Learn Python Programming

More guides on Docker:

• Managing Docker Containers with Docker Compose
• How To Dockerize a Django Application on Ubuntu / Debian / CentOS
• Install Harbor Docker Image Registry on CentOS / Debian / Ubuntu
• How To run Local Kubernetes clusters in Docker