A project template with common setups to start projects with Django + Django REST framework

• Django 2.2+
• Django REST framework 3.10+
• Environment variables loading with django-dotenv
• Generating documentation from OpenAPI schemas with drf-yasg
• CORS support with django-cors-headers
• Exposing application information over Browseable API

$ django-admin.py startproject \
  --template=https://github.com/weynelucas/drf-project-template/archive/master.zip \
  --extension=py,md,env,yml \
  project_name
$ cd project_name
$ pip install -r requirements.txt

At the end of the settings.py you can describe your aplication (name, description and release version). Theese informations will be displayed inside documentation (Swagger and Redoc) and inside the navigation bar of the Browseable API

# settings.py

APP_VERSION = '1.0.0'
APP_NAME = 'Your project name'
APP_DESCRIPTION = 'Your project description'

This project template highly recommends Django apps to be placed inside apps/ directory. To work with this configuration you need first to run the startappcommand inside this directory:

$ cd project/apps
$ python ../manage.py startapp pools

After create the app folder, go to the AppConfig subclass (inside apps.py) and provide a proper name, wich is a dotted path to the application module:

from django.apps import AppConfig


class PoolsConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'apps.pools'
    

Inside __init__.py file inside your module, set the default_app_config variable with the dotted path to your AppConfig subclass:

default_app_config = 'apps.pools.apps.PoolsConfig'

Finnaly, install your app using the configured dotted path:

# settings.py

INSTALLED_APPS = [
  ...
  'apps.pools',
]

You can setting your application with envinronment variables. Create a .env file inside the project/ directory and set your environment variables, most variables names refer to Django settings.

DEBUG=True
ALLOWED_HOSTS=www.example.com,.subdomain.com
PROXY_SCRIPT_NAME=/api

To know how configure databases in a Django application, see the documentation

Depending on your DB_ENGINE variable you should install another package like psycopg2 or cx_Oracle for PostgreSQL and Oracle databases, respectively.

# PostgreSQL settings
DB_ENGINE=postgresql_pyscopg2
DB_NAME=database
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=27017
DB_USER=a_user
DB_PASSWORD=a_password

# Oracle settings (connect using SID)
DB_ENGINE=oracle
DB_NAME=xe
DB_HOST=dbprod01ned.mycompany.com
DB_PORT=1540
DB_USER=a_user
DB_PASSWORD=a_password

# Oracle settings (connect using full DSN string)
DB_ENGINE=oracle
DB_NAME=(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=localhost)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SERVICE_NAME=orclpdb1)))
DB_HOST=
DB_PORT=
DB_USER=a_user
DB_PASSWORD=a_password

# Oracle settings (connect using Easy Connect string)
DB_ENGINE=oracle
DB_NAME=localhost:1521/orclpdb1
DB_HOST=
DB_PORT=
DB_USER=a_user
DB_PASSWORD=a_password

[project_name]
├── docker
│   ├── docker-compose.dev.yml
│   └── Dockerfile
├── environments
│   ├── environment.dev.env
│   ├── environment.prod.env
│   └── environment.stage.env
├── project
│   ├── apps
│   │   └── __init__.py
│   ├── config
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── settings.py
│   │   ├── urls.py
│   │   └── wsgi.py
│   ├── core
│   ├── manage.py
│   ├── static
│   └── templates
│       └── rest_framework
│           └── api.html
├── README.md
└── requirements.txt

The docker/ directory is where are the configuration files needed to run the application with docker.

The environments/ contains .env samples for development, stage and production environments.

The project/ directory is the root of the actual Django project. All code files used by your application are inside this directory