Local Installation for Development¶

This page provides instuctions for a local development installation, using the provided development template so that you can quickly begin to explore the project’s features locally, and so that you can develop custom apps and functionality quickly in a local environment.

If you are seeking to deploy a production installation quickly, this is probably not the right guide for you. It is strongly recommended that you check out the production installation guide, which provides installation instructions for rapid production deployment using standard tools such as Docker and Heroku.

What you need:¶

Python 3.4, 3.5, or 3.6
The ability to create a virtual environment (on Linux, install the python-virtualenv package)
pip3 - the Python package manager
A suitable database. For development and testing, SQLite is used by default, so you do not need to do anything to get started. For production use, it is strongly Recommended to use PostgreSQL server 9.4+
External library dependencies for Pillow, used for basic image processing (see the Pillow Documentation).
Recommended for production use: Redis server <https://redis.io/> for asynchronous handling of emails and other tasks
For Paypal integration only: SSL and FFI libraries needed to use the Paypal REST SDK (see the Github repo <https://github.com/paypal/PayPal-Python-SDK> for details)

Linux

If you are using a package manager (such as apt), you can usually directly install the needed dependencies for Pillow. For example, on Ubuntu:
```
sudo apt-get install libjpeg zlib
sudo apt-get install redis-server
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev libffi-dev
```

Mac

You’ll have to use homebrew to brew install dependencies above. Beware you may run into the zlib issue which can be answered here.

Basic Installation Process¶

Create a subfolder for your new Django project, and enter it:
```
mkdir django
cd django
```
Create a new virtual environment and enter it:
```
python3 -m virtualenv .
source bin/activate
```
- Note: Depending on your system, you may need to follow slightly modified instructions in order to create a virtual environment. No matter which method you use, be sure that your environment is set to use Python 3 by default.
Install the django-danceschool from PyPi. This will also install all of the necessary dependencies (which may take awhile)

pip3 install django-danceschool

Note: Additionally, depending on your operating system, you may need to install certain program dependencies in order to install the Pillow package and the psycopg2 package (as listed in requirements.txt). If you run into issues at this step of the installation, look for these issues first.
Start your Django project, using the django-admin command. To avoid having to set a large number of settings manually, we strongly recommend that you use the preexisting installation template as follows. Make sure that you are in the folder where you would like your project to be located when you do this.
```
django-admin startproject --template https://github.com/django-danceschool/development-template/archive/master.zip <your_project_name>
```
Mac/OS X Users: If you having SSL issues trying to run this command on the Mac check out this Stack Overflow response or download the file manually, move it to the local install folder, and run this modified version of the django-admin command.
```
django-admin startproject --template development-template-master.zip <your_project_name>
```

Perform initial database migrations

cd <your_project_name>
python3 manage.py migrate

Create a superuser so that you can log into the admin interface (you will be prompted for username and password)
```
python3 manage.py createsuperuser
```
Optional, but strongly recommended: Run the easy-installer setup script, and follow all prompts. This script will guide you through the process of setting initial values for many things, creating a few initial pages that many school use, and setting up user groups and permissions that will make it easier for you to get started running your dance school right away.
```
python3 manage.py setupschool
```
Run the server and try to log in!
```
python3 manage.py runserver
```

Following steps 1-8 above will give you a working installation for testing purposes. However, additional steps are needed to setup emails, payment processor integration, and other automated processes. These are described below.

Settings Customization and Production Deployment¶

After performing steps 1-8 above, you should have a working instance of the danceschool project. However, in order to make the site usable for your purposes, you will, at a minimum, need to do some basic setting of settings and preferences

There are two types of settings in this project:

Hard-coded settings needed to run the project at all (located in settings.py)
Runtime settings that customize the site’s functionality (stored in the database using the django-dynamic-preferences app, and then cached)

If you have used the default setup provided in step 4 above, then you have already been provided with appropriate default settings for a development instance of the project. For example, Django’s debug mode is on, and the project uses a SQLite backend to store data instead of a production database such as PostgreSQL. Before thoroughly testing out the project, the only settings that you are required so set in settings.py are for features such as email and the Paypal/Stripe integration, because these features cannot be enabled by default until you have entered credentials for those services. However, before you deploy this project for production purposes, you will need, at a minimum, to customize settings for a payment processor (e.g. Paypal/Stripe/Square), email, and a production-appropriate database. Also, often time, if your workflow involves both a development installation and a production installation, there will be different settings required for each installation.

For more details on the types of settings that you may need to modify, see manual_settings_list. Be sure to also check out the guide to setting up email, setup_email, the guide to setting up payment processors, setup_payments, and the guide to the Huey asynchronous task queue, Huey (and Redis) setup for production.

Customizing runtime settings is even easier. Simply log in as the superuser account that you previously created, and go to http://yoursite/settings/global/. There, you will see organized pages in which you can change runtime settings associated with various functions of the site. If you have run the setupschool command as instructed in step 7 above, you will find that sensible defaults for all of the most important runtime settings have already been put into place for you.