Deploying a Django Application on Apache WSGI on Windows

Following are some notes I made during my last install of a Django based web application on an Apache web server running on Windows.

This assumes a Django application is being installed on a computer with no prior Django installs. I also describe a particular example, but the same steps can be applied to many applications, just replace my application specifics with your application specifics.

• Install Python 2.6.
  • Run the MSI installer and install in C:\Programs.
  • Create the following environment variable: PYTHON_HOME=C:\Programs\Python26 (see System Properties/Advanced/Environment Variables).
  • Append the newly created variable to your PATH variable. Also append %PYTHON_HOME%\Scripts and %PYTHON_HOME%\Lib
  • Open a command line prompt, execute the command python. This should start the Python interactive interpreter.
• Install Django 1.1.
  • Unpack the distribution (usually a tar.gz or .zip file) in some temporary directory. You might need to install (the free and excellent) 7-Zip for this.
  • Open a command line prompt in the directory Django was unpacked in, most likely Django-1.1.
  • Execute python setup.py install (or setup.py install).
  • To check if the install went correctly, you should be able to import the Django module in Python. Start Python from the command line, and execute:

      import django
      django.VERSION
              

• Install Apache 2.2.
  • Runs the Windows MSI installer provided from the Apache web site.
  • From a web browser, enter the URL http://localhost. A valid web page hosted be Apache should be displayed.
• Install the modwsgi module.
  • The module file will be named something like mod_wsgi-win32-ap22py26-2.6.so (http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/downloads/list).
  • Copy it to the modules directory of the Apache installation. E.g., C:/Program Files/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/modules.
  • Rename it to mod_wsgi.so.
  • Open Apache's http.conf file.
    • Add the line LoadModule wsgi_module modules/mod_wsgi.so before all the other LoadModule entries.
    • Configure Apache for your Django project by adding the following to end of http.conf:

      # Static content
      
      Alias /media/ C:/Programs/TestDjango/mysite/media/
      
      <Directory C:/Programs/TestDjango/mysite/media/>
      Order deny,allow
      Allow from all
      </Directory>
      
      # Django dynamic content
      
      WSGIScriptAlias / C:/Programs/TestDjango/mysite/apache/django.wsgi
      
      <Directory C:/Programs/TestDjango/mysite/apache>
      Order deny,allow
      Allow from all
      </Directory>
      

      Where TestDjango is the Django project root. The paths below TestDjango will be specific to your project. This configuration serves all static media via the URL space /media/ and all the rest via WSGI and Django.

    • You may need to create the django.wsgi script if it's not already created. To do so, create a file django.wsgi and add the following to it:

          import os
          import sys
      
          sys.path.append('C:/Programs/TestDjango')
          os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'mysite.settings'
      
          import django.core.handlers.wsgi
          application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()
                    

      Note that sys.path.append('C:/Programs/TestDjango') is only needed if your project (TestDjango) is not on Python's path, PYTHONPATH.

  • Restart Apache. For this you can use the Apache Service Monitor from the taskbar tray.
  • From a web browser, attempt to hit the Django application's web page, such as http://localhost/mysite.

References

• Install modwsgi:
  • http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/InstallationOnWindows
  • http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modwsgi/#howto-deployment-modwsgi
• Configure Apache for modswgi:
  • http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/QuickInstallationGuide
  • http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/IntegrationWithDjango
• Install Django:
  • http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/install/