# Deploy Django app with CLI

This guide shows how to get a Django app running in your AWS account with Digger We are going to deploy this TODO list application (opens new window). This application needs a database for deployment. This specific application does not need celery and hence we don't need to create a queue or a separate service for background workers.

You can see an example of this application deployed here (opens new window)

TODO list application

# Prerequisites

# Clone the respository

Clone our examples respository and remove the digger.yml file. We will re-initialize this file:

git clone https://github.com/diggerhq/django-todolist
cd django-todolist
rm digger.yml

# Initialize a Digger project

Create a new project in Digger and generate a digger.yml configuration file

dg project init

We can update the digger.yml file services section to the following:

services:
  backend:
    service_name: backend
    path: backend
    env_files: []
    publicly_accessible: true
    service_type: container
    container_port: 8001
    health_check: /
    dockerfile: backend/Dockerfile
    resources: {}
    dependencies: {}

Run the following command to sync these changes:

dg sync

TIP

We could use dg service add to register the service, but in that case we need to update the container port value.

# Create an environment

This will be the "destination" of your app in your AWS account. Any project has at least one environment, but often more: Production / Dev / Staging, or one per customer, or one per geography. We are passing a --target parameter which points to our terraform template (opens new window). This template will create the infrastructure needed to deploy this app to Amazon ECS Fargate. We have customised it to include an RDS instance. It will also wire the right database settings as environment variables 😉

dg env create production --target diggerhq/target-fargate@todolist
dg env apply production

Digger will generate the infrastructure in your AWS account, so this step may take a few minutes.

You should see the URL pointing to your service's load balancer. By default this will not contain the node app but a default image that is deployed. To deploy the node application we need to create a release.

TIP

To see which resources are aboout to be created you can run dg env plan production. In general it is recommended to run this command before each apply. You can see the apply happening live by passing the --verbose option to it.

TIP

You may see 'Service Temporarily Unavailable' once you load the loadbalancer url, its because the cluster is spinning up. In a few seconds it should show the default backend service.

# Deploy your app

dg env build production
dg env push production
dg env deploy production

You should see the URL pointing to your service's load balancer. That's it! your todolist app deployed🙂

# Note on environment variables

Digger allows you to map important environment variables from your application directly into your application. In the above example, we automatically map the DATABASE_URL per environment into your application so that deployment just works out of the box. You can see a list of your environment variables in the web UI (opens new window):

Digger Environment Web UI

# Destroy the environment

This will remove all infrastructure for the production environment from your AWS account if you don't need it anymore

dg env destroy production

← Write your own Terraform →