Using RHSCL: Django on Python 3 with PostgreSQL

This article will show you how to use two software collections of RHSCL 1.0 Beta for cutting edge development. We will create a Django 1.5 application (running on Python 3.3), that will use PostgreSQL 9.2 as a database.

Installing Dependencies

First off, we will install the required collections. If you haven't done so already, you need to subscribe to the correct RHN channel (rhel-x86_64-variant-6-rhscl-1-beta, where variant is one of server, client or workstation).

Now you should be able to install all the needed dependencies just by issuing this command (as a superuser):

yum install python33 postgresql92 python33-python-psycopg2

The reason why python33-python-psycopg2 has to be listed is that it doesn't belong to the basic python33 installation package set.

Configuring PostgreSQL

Now we need to setup a PostgreSQL database. First, let's initialize database cluster and run the service (as a superuser):

service postgresql92-postgresql initdb
service postgresql92-postgresql start

Second, we need to create the actual database. For this, we have to switch to postgres user, who has permissions to do this, then we need to create new database user (name should be the same as the name of your local account) and then finally the database called testdb (again, do this as a superuser):

su - postgres
scl enable postgresql92 bash
createuser
createdb testdb --owner

We're all set and we can continue with the Django part. Before going on, don't forget to exit the all the subshells to get back to your original shell.

Creating a New Django Project

We will create a new Django project using virtualenv. Everything we need (except for Django itself) is present in the python33 collection, so we just need to create the virtual environment and install Django from PyPi there:

scl enable python33 postgresql92 bash
virtualenv --system-site-packages my-django-app
cd my-django-app
source bin/activate
pip install django==1.5.1

To comment a bit on the above:  First we switch to SCL-enabled shell (don't forget to enable both collections), then we create a virtualenv directory my-django-app (passing the option to use RPM installed site-packages from the collection). After that, we switch to the newly created directory and activate the virtual environment (lines 3 and 4). Finally, we install Django (I decided to pin it to version 1.5.1 in this example, but you should be able to use any version >=1.5.0.)

Now that everything is set, we can create the actual Django project:

django-admin.py startproject myproj
cd myproj

Then we will adjust database settings to use our previously created database. In your favourite text editor, open myproj/settings.py and fill in database engine, user and name, so that the DATABASES section looks like this:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql_psycopg2',
        'NAME': 'testdb',
        'USER': '',
        'PASSWORD': '',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '',
    }
}

... and then run

python manage.py syncdb

to make sure that the database is set correctly. You will be asked whether or not you want to create a new superuser for your project - feel free to choose either option, it doesn't matter for this tutorial.
And that's it! We now have a fully operational Django 1.5 application running on Python 3.3, using PostgreSQL 9.2 - all that on RHEL 6. Now we can just create a simple view that will print out all this.

A Simple View to Prove It

As an optional step, we will create a really minimalistic view that confirms we're using the right versions. First, let's define a new view function. Create a new file myproj/views.py and copy&paste this into it:

import sys

import django

from django.db import backend, connection
from django.shortcuts import render_to_response

def index(request):
    return render_to_response('index.html',
                              {'sysver': sys.version,
                               'djangover': django.VERSION,
                               'pgsqlver': backend.get_version(connection)})

Then create a directory myproj/templates and a file myproj/templates/index.html (note, that we will not use actual HTML, but just a plain text to render the versions, which suites our example but would otherwise be considered very ugly):

Python: {{ sysver }}, Django: {{ djangover }}, PostgreSQL: {{ pgsqlver }}

Now we need to tell Django where to look for templates. Find TEMPLATE_DIRS constant in myproj/settings.py and replace it with following:

import os
BASE_DIR = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
TEMPLATE_DIRS = (
    os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'templates'),
)

Finally, let's route the / (root URL of our Django project) to the newly created view. Open myproj/urls.py in your favourite editor and insert following line into patterns:

url(r'^$', 'myproj.views.index', name='home')

Now just run python manage.py runserver and go to http://127.0.0.1:8000/ in your browser. You should see a result like this:
Python: 3.3.2 (default, Jun 12 2013, 11:40:18) [GCC 4.4.7 20120313 (Red Hat 4.4.7-3)], Django: (1, 5, 1, 'final', 0), PostgreSQL: 90204