Linode Object Storage for Django Static Files

Pushing Django into production takes many different steps to consider. Static files are among the most important steps.

Why is this?

Well, Django itself should not serve static files (ie images, css, javascript, videos, pdfs, etc) but rather should reference it from an production-grade static file server.

Technically, Django can serve static files but, just as the Django team recommends, it's not efficient and is probably insecure.

Luckily for us, Linode provides a service that makes it very easy to serve static files.

In this post, we'll be doing the essential setup for your Django project to use Object Storage on Linode.

Technical Stack

Django (v2.2+)
Django Storages
Python (v3.6+)

Service Stack

Production Django Server: Anywhere (linode, heroku, gcp, aws, digitalocean,)
Static Files Server: Linode.com's Object Storage

Watch

Guide

1. Setup an account on Linode

Go here for a new user $100 credit (affiliate link).

2. Login to https://cloud.linode.com/

3. Navigate to Object Storage

Activate Object Storage on your account if you haven't already. It costs $5/mo for about 250GB of storage. This is more than enough for the vast majority of projects. Plus with that credit above you probably will not be paying anything for a while. Read more here

4. Create a bucket

Inside of object storage, click the link for Add a bucket. Next enter Label and select a region. I have entered the following:

label: cfe2
region: Newark, NJ

After the bucket is created locate the bucket url. Mine is:

cfe2.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com

Let's reference these new items as:

BUCKET_NAME = 'cfe2'
BUCKET_URL = 'https://cfe2.us-east-1.linodeobjects.com'
BUCKET_REGION = 'us-east-1'

Keep note of your BUCKET_NAME, BUCKET_URL, and BUCKET_REGION, as we'll use them in our Django project

If you've used AWS S3, you'll notice identical naming patterns on purpose. Linode has made it very easy to switch.

5. Create a Object Storage Access Key

Navigate to object storage and click on Access Keys then Create an Access Key.

For the label, name it similar to your BUCKET. In my case I have the following:

Access Key

Label='cfe2-staticfiles-key'
Limited Access = True
Read/Write to BUCKET_NAME cfe2

Click Create.

Now you should have your required access keys:

LINODE_BUCKET_ACCESS_KEY='GBN3RIQWFB4EAI8Y3SF7'
LINODE_BUCKET_SECRET_KEY='S7zT9e5OSDeY4vwBBBm1BEdT8gFidE3qKkPNvwNB'

Keep these keys safe, they will give anyone (or anything) that has them 100% access to your bucket.

6. Create/Activate your Virtual Environment

Need a virtual environment? Learn how to create one for windows here mac here, or linux here.

Open up terminal or PowerShell

cd path/to/your/django/project/

Create with venv

python3 -m venv

feel free to use pipenv, virtualenv, poetry or any other virtual environment manager.

Activate virtual enviroment

macOS / Linux

source bin/activate

Windows

.\Scripts\Activate

7. Install requirements

(venv) $ pip install django django-storages boto boto3

8. Setup base a Django Project

(venv) $ django-admin startproject cfehome .
(venv) $ python manage.py migrate
(venv) $ pip freeze > requirements.txt

Now verify files created include:

(venv) $ ls
cfehome     db.sqlite3      manage.py
pyvenv.cfg  requirements.txt

9. Setup django-storages

Update your settings.py to the following: Notice my project name is cfehome so my settings are located in cfehome/settings.py

We'll be using almost the same settings we would for AWS because django-storages does not currently have settings for Linode.

Here are the settings:

python

# cfehome/settings.py
DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage'
STATICFILES_STORAGE = 'storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage'

LINODE_BUCKET=os.environ.get('LINODE_BUCKET', 'cfe')
LINODE_BUCKET_REGION=os.environ.get('LINODE_BUCKET_REGION',  'us-east-1')
LINODE_BUCKET_ACCESS_KEY=os.environ.get('LINODE_BUCKET_ACCESS_KEY', 'GBN3RIQWFB4EAI8Y3SF7') 
LINODE_BUCKET_SECRET_KEY=os.environ.get('LINODE_BUCKET_SECRET_KEY', 'S7zT9e5OSDeY4vwBBBm1BEdT8gFidE3qKkPNvwNB') 


AWS_S3_ENDPOINT_URL=f'https://{LINODE_BUCKET_REGION}.linodeobjects.com'
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=LINODE_BUCKET_ACCESS_KEY
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=LINODE_BUCKET_SECRET_KEY
AWS_S3_REGION_NAME=LINODE_BUCKET_REGION
AWS_S3_USE_SSL=True
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=LINODE_BUCKET

10. Run collectstatic

Now run:

python manage.py collectstatic --noinput

From here on out, your Django project is using a production-grade static file server. Feel free to use FileField, ImageField or any other field that requires uploading as well.

Congrats! You are now setup with Linode Object storage. Easy enough huh? There are definitely more advanced options we can do here but django-storages and Linode make it easy to get up and running fast and efficiently.