Using mod_wsgi to support Django development via Apache

I'm building a Django shop which integrates PHP components in the form of a blog (Wordpress) and needs testing with SSL. As discussed in the last blog entry- that means I can't well test holistically using only the Django dev server. On production I am using mod_python at the moment, which is inappropriate for development as I would need to restart the server each time I make a change.

I'm looking to follow a recipe, using mod_wsgi for two purposes:

• To have a dev server running via apache, to integrate PHP and SSL components, as well as having "hot code replacement" to support development.
• To evaluate mod_wsgi on the basis of the claim: "for hosting WSGI applications in conjunction with Apache it has a lower memory overhead and performs better than mod_python".

Step 1 will be to deploying using mod_wsgi on my dev laptop per the mod_wsgi docs.

• sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi [ubuntu]
• restart apache

Step 2 is a standard integration with Apache. Per http://code.google.com/p/modwsgi/wiki/IntegrationWithDjango

• create appropriate .wsgi file
• edit apache.conf with directive (see below)

Step 3 is getting it to then run in daemon mode. This is a little like what mod_jk or ruby passenger / mod_rails does. It brokers requests off to a separate sub process which forks and brokers off to individual Python Django scripts.

Step 4, finally per: http://blog.dscpl.com.au/2008/12/using-modwsgi-when-developing-django.html, is to add a monitor.py (the source of which is here) and reference it in the .wsgi file.

Here are example apache / httpd.conf:

	# for the deamon behavoir
	WSGIDaemonProcess appname-django processes=2 threads=15
	WSGIProcessGroup appname-django
	NameVirtualHost *:80
	<VirtualHost *:80>
	ServerName www.client1.net
	# to mount the application from the wsgi script (see next gist)
	WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/your/dev.wsgi
	Alias /media/ /path/to/your/django/media/
	<Directory /path/to/your/django/media/>
	Order deny,allow
	Allow from all
	</Directory>
	</VirtualHost>

view raw wsgi httpd.conf hosted with ❤ by GitHub

And dev.wsgi (based of putting a monitor.py in the root of the django app):

	import os, sys
	sys.path.append('/path/to/djangoapp/')
	os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'djangoapp.settings'
	import django.core.handlers.wsgi
	application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()
	import djangoapp.monitor
	djangoapp.monitor.start(interval=1.0)

view raw gistfile1.py hosted with ❤ by GitHub