django-postgres.md

Use Postgres as your Database

Prerequisites

• Install postgres.

• Make sure your user is a postgres superuser, and you can access postgres from the command line by running psql.

• Install psycopg2-binary, the package used by Django to use postgres. In your virtualenv run:

    pipenv install psycopg2-binary
  

Choosing Simple Configuration Options

Assuming our project name is myproject, we will choose the following defaults:

• The postgres server will be running on the same machine as the django project.
• A postgres database called myproject
• A postgres user called myproject
• The user's password would be myproject

In your settings file, modify DATABASES to:

        DATABASES = {
            'default': {
                'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
                'NAME': 'myproject',
                'USER': 'myproject',
                'PASSWORD': 'myproject',
                'HOST': '127.0.0.1',
                'PORT': '5432',
            }
        }

Create A Postgres User And Database

• Assuming you have django-extensions installed, use the following command to generate commands to create a user and a db for your project:

       python manage.py sqlcreate
  

  This will output something simlar to:

    CREATE USER myproject WITH ENCRYPTED PASSWORD 'myproject' CREATEDB;
    CREATE DATABASE myproject WITH ENCODING 'UTF-8' OWNER "myproject";
    GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE myproject TO myproject;
  

• To execute the code above and create your DB, use psql (assuming your user is a postgres superuser):

       python manage.py sqlcreate | psql
  

Migrate!

• To create the tables, indexes and relationships in your DB, run:

       python manage.py migrate
  

Notes

• This setup does not fit more complicated setups, where the database is running on a different host. It also assumes the access to your postgres is restricted and knowledge of the user/password would not help an attacker to access your db.

• See also https://github.com/kennethreitz/dj-database-url for easily configuring DB access from environment varibales.