This git repository helps you get up and running quickly w/ a Django installation on OpenShift. The Django project name used in this repo is 'openshift' but you can feel free to change it. Right now the backend is sqlite3 and the database runtime is found in $OPENSHIFT_DATA_DIR/sqlite3.db.

Before you push this app for the first time, you will need to change the Django admin password. Then, when you first push this application to the cloud instance, the sqlite database is copied from wsgi/openshift/sqlite3.db with your newly changed login credentials. Other than the password change, this is the stock database that is created when python manage.py syncdb is run with only the admin app installed.

On subsequent pushes, a python manage.py syncdb is executed to make sure that any models you added are created in the DB. If you do anything that requires an alter table, you could add the alter statements in GIT_ROOT/.openshift/action_hooks/alter.sql and then use GIT_ROOT/.openshift/action_hooks/deploy to execute that script (make sure to back up your database w/ rhc app snapshot save first :) )

You can also turn on the DEBUG mode for Django application using the rhc env set DEBUG=True --app APP_NAME. If you do this, you'll get nicely formatted error pages in browser for HTTP 500 errors.

Do not forget to turn this environment variable off and fully restart the application when you finish:

$ rhc env unset DEBUG
$ rhc app stop && rhc app start

Create an account at http://openshift.redhat.com/

Install the RHC client tools if you have not already done so:

sudo gem install rhc

Create a python-2.6 application

rhc app create -a django -t python-2.6

Add this upstream repo

cd django
git remote add upstream -m master git://github.com/openshift/django-example.git
git pull -s recursive -X theirs upstream master

Then push the repo upstream

git push

Here, the admin user name and password will be displayed, so pay special attention.

That's it. You can now checkout your application at:

http://django-$yournamespace.rhcloud.com

As the git push output scrolls by, keep an eye out for a line of output that starts with Django application credentials: . This line contains the generated admin password that you will need to begin administering your Django app. This is the only time the password will be displayed, so be sure to save it somewhere. You might want to pipe the output of the git push to a text file so you can grep for the password later.