Docker compose for Django and MySQL

2 minutes to read

To use Django and MySQL Docker compose, we need to create these required files and add some contents to them.

Dockerfile for a custom docker image
requirements.txt
docker-compose.yml
.env file

Dockerfile

We create a Dockerfile for a custom a Django image.
Example content of Dockerfile

# Dockerfile
FROM python:3.9-alpine3.14
# Set Python output is sent straight to terminal to see the output in realtime.
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED=1
WORKDIR /code
COPY requirements.txt /code/
RUN pip install -r requirements.txt

requirements.txt

We use requirements.txt for installing all Python requirement.
Example content of requirements.txt

Django>=3.0,<4.0
mysqlclient>=2.0.3

docker-compose.yml

Example content of docker-compose.yml

# docker-compose.yml
version: "3.9"
services:
  web:
    container_name: web
    build: .
    # TODO remove hard code sleep, it should use short sleep retry in entrypoint.sh
    command: bash -c "sleep 15 && python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000"
    volumes:
      - .:/code # mount current folder to /code folder in side a container
    ports:
      - 8000:8000
    depends_on:
      - db
    networks:
      - compose_network
  db:
    container_name: mysql-server
    image: mysql:8.0
    restart: always
    environment:
      MYSQL_ROOT_PASSWORD_FILE: "/run/secrets/mysql_root_password"
      MYSQL_USER: my-user
      MYSQL_PASSWORD_FILE: "/run/secrets/mysql_password"
      MYSQL_DATABASE: my-db
    ports:
      - 3306:3306
    secrets:
      - mysql_root_password
      - mysql_password
    healthcheck:
      test: mysqladmin ping -h localhost -u $$MYSQL_USER --password=$$(cat /run/secrets/mysql_password)
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 10
    volumes:
      # Use name volumes, managed by Docker for local development
      - mysql-data:/var/lib/mysql
      - mysql-logs:/var/log/mysql
    command:
      [
        --character-set-server=utf8mb4,
        --collation-server=utf8mb4_unicode_ci,
        --lower-case-table-names=1,
        --default-authentication-plugin=mysql_native_password
      ]
    networks:
      - compose_network
# https://docs.docker.com/compose/compose-file/compose-file-v3/#external-1
volumes:
  mysql-data:
  mysql-logs:
# https://serverfault.com/questions/871090/how-to-use-docker-secrets-without-a-swarm-cluster
secrets:
  mysql_root_password:
    file: ./mysql_root_password.txt
  mysql_password:
    file: ./mysql_password.txt
networks:
  compose_network:

docker secrets

Create docker secret files to be used for database passwords

echo "MySQL1234\!" > mysql_root_password.txt
echo "pa\$\$w@rd"  > mysql_password.txt

.env file

Explicit prefix volume/network name with this value or use -P with docker run
More details https://docs.docker.com/compose/reference/envvars/#compose_project_name

# .env
COMPOSE_PROJECT_NAME=django

File structure of our Django Docker compose

$ tree . -a
├── .env
├── Dockerfile
├── docker-compose.yml
└── requirements.txt

Create a new Django project

CD to the root of the project where we have docker-compose.yml file.
Launch a web container and run django-admin to create a new Django project by running the following commands:

$ projectName=my_django_site
$ docker-compose run web django-admin startproject $projectName . // docker compose run if you use compose v2

This will create a new Django project to a current working directory
Optionally, you can change a project name to any name that you like.

Change files permission

At the root of project, execute the following command.

$ sudo chown -R $USER:$USER .

Then checking files permission to make sure that the current user must have ownership of all files.

$ ls -l

Update a database connection

Open my_django_site/settings.py file with your text editor.
Update DATABASES as the following:.

# my-django-site/settings.py
DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'HOST': 'db',
        'PORT': 3306,
        'NAME': 'my-db',
        'USER': 'my-user',
        'PASSWORD': 'pass@rd',
    }
}

Launch a website

Run the following command to launch web and db containers.

$ docker-compose up # docker compose up if you use compose v2

Open a browser and navigate to http://localhost:8000
You should find a welcome page of Django site.

Stop and remove containers

To stop containers, press ctrl + c.
To remove containers and all volumes, run docker-compose down ---volumes or docker compose down ---volumes if you use compose v2

Useful resources

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