Learn how to deploy a Django Channels project into production.

Entire Project Code

Course: Chat x Channels

Requirements

Django 2.0.5 or Django 1.11
Channels 2.1.1
Python 3.5 (and up)
Heroku.com Account (likely paid)

Resources

Our code is here
Learn how to build this with the course Chat x Channels
Go Live on Heroku with a non-channels Django project with this post
How to Stage Django for production
Create a Blank Django Project
Redis Setup

Let's get started

1. Clone our project

Below will take you to the commit this guide is in reference to (the deployment ready code from this course)

$ cd path/to/your/dev/folder
$ mkdir channels
$ cd channels
$ git clone https://github.com/codingforentrepreneurs/ChatXChannels .
$ git reset 4763738e0080c878ac5351dd92f39c774615af40 --hard
$ git remote remove origin
$ virtualenv -p python3 .
$ source bin/activate
(channels) $ pip install -r requirements.txt

2. Prepare for Heroku in-depth guide

Create App

(channels) $ cd src
(channels) $ ls
cfehome     chat        db.sqlite3  manage.py   templates
(channels) $ git init
(channels) $ heroku create cfe-channels

Provision Addons Create your PostgreSQL database and Redis datastore.

(channels) $ heroku addons:create heroku-postgresql:hobby-dev
(channels) $ heroku addons:create heroku-redis:hobby-dev

Add Environment Variables

(channels) $ heroku config:set SECRET_KEY=<your-django-secret-key>

<your-django-secret-key>: This is the SECRET_KEY in your settings.py module

Create Procfile with contents:

web: daphne cfehome.asgi:application --port $PORT --bind 0.0.0.0

cfehome.asgi:channel_layer we'll create this below
daphne is an alternative to gunicorn

3. Create Production Settings

For me, I'll put it in cfehome/production.py next to settings.py. To learn how tostage for production, go here

import os
from urllib.parse import urlparse


DEBUG = False
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['cfe-channels.herokuapp.com']
SECRET_KEY = os.environ.get('SECRET_KEY', 'SOME+RANDOM+BACKUPKEz9+3vnmjb0u@&w68t#5_e8s9-lbfhv-')  


DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'db.sqlite3'),
    }
}
import dj_database_url
db_from_env = dj_database_url.config()
DATABASES['default'].update(db_from_env)
DATABASES['default']['CONN_MAX_AGE'] = 500

Include Channels Specific Settings


## Channels Specific
CHANNEL_LAYERS = {
    "default": {
        "BACKEND": "channels_redis.core.RedisChannelLayer",
        "CONFIG": {
            "hosts": [os.environ.get('REDIS_URL', 'redis://localhost:6379')],
        },
        "symmetric_encryption_keys": [SECRET_KEY],
    },
}
ASGI_APPLICATION = 'cfehome.routing.application'

ASGI_APPLICATION: Location of where your Channel's root routing is.
ALLOWED_HOSTS: Change to include your Heroku project's name

4. Daphne

Daphne is by Django to handle running Channels. This is a requirement in order to make your project to run live. Daphne replaces gunicorn for Channels projects.

Create asgi.py next to wsgi.py

Current path: cfehome/asgi.py

"""
ASGI entrypoint. Configures Django and then runs the application
defined in the ASGI_APPLICATION setting.
"""

import os
import django
from channels.routing import get_default_application

os.environ.setdefault("DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE", "cfehome.settings")
django.setup()
application = get_default_application()

Local test

Open up terminal

$ cd path/to/your/dev/folder/channels/
$ source bin/activate
(channels) $ cd src
(channels) $ daphne cfehome.asgi:application

If errors occur, there's something not setup correctly

5. Requirements, Runtime, .gitignore

(channels) $ ls
cfehome     chat        db.sqlite3  manage.py   templates Procile
(channels) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt
(channels) $ echo "python-3.6.5" > runtime.txt

Copy the contents of this .gitignore and paste them into .gitignore

(channels) $ ls -a
.       .gitignore  chat        manage.py
..      cfehome     db.sqlite3  templates

6. Disable Collectstatic and use S3 for static files

(channels) $ heroku config:set DISABLE_COLLECTSTATIC=1

7. Commit Production-ready Code

(channels) $ git add --all
(channels) $ git commit -m "Prepare for production"

8. Push

(channels) $ git push heroku master && heroku run python manage.py migrate

9. Scale Dynos

(channels) $  heroku ps:scale web=1

Django Channels 2.0 to Production Environment