Configuring Django under wsgi

A small reminder for settings up Django under wsgi. Apparently the following snippet helps getting the path correct avoiding the dreadful

self.load_middleware() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 39, in load_middleware for middleware_path in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES: File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/utils/functional.py", line 184, in inner self._setup() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 42, in _setup self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 95, in __init__ raise ImportError("Could not import settings '%s' (Is it on sys.path?): %s" % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e)) ImportError: Could not import settings 'xxx.settings' (Is it on sys.path?): No module named xxx.settings

messages from Apache (well, instead of ‘xxx’ your project name will be mentioned of course).

The fix
import sys

# Correct path. app_path = os.path.abspath(os.path.join(os.path.dirname( __file__ ), '..')) if app_path not in sys.path: sys.path.append(app_path)

For completeness, the sites-enables/xxx looks like

WSGIPythonPath /var/www/path/to/project


<VirtualHost *:80>

    DocumentRoot /var/www/path/to/project

    ServerAdmin admin@example.com

    ServerName my.example.com
    Alias /static/ /var/www/path/to/project/

    

        Order deny,allow

        Allow from all

    
    WSGIDaemonProcess project_name

    WSGIScriptAlias / /var/www/path/to/project/wsgi.py

</VirtualHost>

Happy Djangoing!

UPDATE: when multiple Django applications are configured under Apache apparently a request could be routed to the Apache instance hosting wrong application. The server will not load application and Apache log files would show:

Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py", line 219, in __call__ self.load_middleware() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 39, in load_middleware for middleware_path in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES: File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/utils/functional.py", line 184, in inner self._setup() File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 42, in _setup self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module) File "/usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/Django-1.4.3-py2.7.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 95, in __init__ raise ImportError("Could not import settings '%s' (Is it on sys.path?): %s" % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e)) ImportError: Could not import settings 'xxx.settings' (Is it on sys.path?): No module named xxx.settings

basically failing to load settings from the wrong application. More on this topic in this blog post, but the fix seem to be specifying WSGIDaemonProcess per application.