Django Rocket

Rocket Django is an Open-Source Django Starter project desgined to streamline the development process and help you build modern, responsive web applications based on a template with ease. Packed with pre-built components, Tailwind CSS styling, and best coding practices, Rocket Django is a ready to deploy package provides a solid foundation for your next Django project.

Key features

• Pre-built tools: A feature-rich library of apps that accelerate development and ensures consistency across your application.

• Tailwind CSS integration: Tailwind CSS provides a utility-first approach to styling, offering flexibility and efficiency in creating visually appealing interfaces.

• Best coding practices: Adherence to industry-standard coding practices promotes maintainability, scalability, and readability.

• Ready-to-deploy structure: Rocket Django is designed for easy deployment, saving developers time and effort.

• API via Django REST Framework: An option integrate the application with API using DRF.

and a lot more!

Who is it for?

You can use Rocket Django to quickly kickstart your Django project without spending time on boilerplate code and styling. It’s used for building web applications like SaaS tools, analytics dashboards, or any other type of web app that you require.

• Django Developers: Seasoned Django developers can leverage Rocket Django to streamline their workflows and rapidly build complex web applications.

• Beginners: Those new to Django can benefit from Rocket Django’s pre-configured structure, reducing the learning curve and enabling them to focus on core application logic.

How to use it?

The free tier is available for you to use and customize as you like. On this page, we’ll check out the different modules that this tier has to offer and how we can set it up.

Clone the repository

• Head over to this repo and clone it locally on your desktop

The source code can be downloaded from the official page or the GitHub repository.

git clone https://github.com/app-generator/rocket-django.git
cd rocket-django

Once the source code is cloned, we’ll compile the code and it’ll be ready for deployment.

Building the project

It’s best to use a Python virtual environment for installing the project dependencies. You can use the following code to create the virtual environment

virtualenv env

To start the environment

• If you’re on Windows

.\env\Scripts\activate.bat

• If you’re using Linux

source env/bin/activate

Finally, after activating the virtual environment, you can install the dependencies using

pip install -r requirements.txt

You’ll also need to install the Tailwind CSS dependencies and the application functionality using NPM. You can do this in a separate terminal with the virtual environment enabled.

npm install

Setting up the database

By default, the application uses SQLite for persistence. In order to use MySql/PostgreSQL, you’ll need to install the Python driver:

pip install mysqlclient # for MySql
# OR
pip install psycopg2    # for PostgreSQL

To connect the application with your mySQL database, you’ll need to fill in the credentials int the .env file and run the migrations.

.env

    DB_ENGINE=mysql
    # OR
    DB_ENGINE=postgresql
    # DB credentials below
    DB_HOST=localhost
    DB_NAME=<DB_NAME_HERE>
    DB_USERNAME=<DB_USER_HERE>
    DB_PASS=<DB_PASS_HERE>
    DB_PORT=3306

Use the following commands to seed your data:

python manage.py makemigrations
python manage.py migrate

Running the project

You can run Rocket Django locally or deploy it on Render. If you want to run the server locally, you’ll need to run the following command:

python manage.py runserver

Furthermore, you’ll also need to start the frontend using:

npm run dev

Tip

If you want to customize the template locally and want the project to hot reload, you’ll have to use the following command instead:

npx tailwindcss -i ./static/assets/style.css -o ./static/dist/css/output.css --watch

That’s it! Open localhost on your browswer and you can interact with the application. If you want to run the application in a Docker container, we’ve got you covered. Run the following commands:

# Optional (kill all existing containers)
docker container kill $(docker ps -q) ; docker container rm $(docker ps -a -q) ; docker network prune -f
# Start the APP
docker-compose up --build

Once the image is finished building and the container has been deployed, you can access the application on your localhost:5085.

Moreover, if you want to deploy the application on Render, you’ll have to modify the render.yaml file.

Attention

Make sure to change the application name to match your repository name on GitHub.

render.yaml

        services:
          - type: web
            name: rocket-django # <-- change this name to match your repositoy
            plan: starter
            env: python
            region: frankfurt  # region should be same as your database region.
            buildCommand: "./build.sh"
            startCommand: "gunicorn core.wsgi:application"
            envVars:
                - key: DEBUG
                  value: False
                - key: SECRET_KEY
                  generateValue: true
                - key: WEB_CONCURRENCY
                  value: 4

• You’ll need to create a Blueprint instance on Render by going to this link.

• Connect the repository that you want to deploy.

• Fill in the Service Group Name and click on the Update Existing Resources button.

• Click on Environment and add key called PYTHON_VERSION and set it equal to 3.12.0.

• After you make this change, the deployment will start automatically.

Modules

In this section, we’ll go over the features that the starter template has to offer. Right off the bat, we get access to a dashboard that shows us our product analytics. However, if we want to make any changes, we’ll have to sign in first. The dummy credentials for an admin user are given on the Sign In screen. This brings us to our first functionality.

Extended User model

One feature worth mentioning is the extended user model included in the free version. This pre-made model allows for different functionality accross the application. We can change this information in the Profile tab.

class Profile(models.Model):
    user      = models.OneToOneField(User, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    role      = models.CharField(max_length=20, choices=ROLE_CHOICES, default='user')
    full_name = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    country   = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    city      = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    zip_code  = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    address   = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    phone     = models.CharField(max_length=255, null=True, blank=True)
    avatar    = models.ImageField(upload_to='avatar', null=True, blank=True)

    def __str__(self):
        return self.user.username

Data table

Let’s have a look at the data table.

The data table shows us the products in our database. We can perform basic CRUD operations on this screen.

Charts

The next best thing in this template are the charts made using ApexCharts. There are two ways we can populate them: * Using Django’s object-relational mapper, for people that want to avoid working in JavaScript

• Using an API via Django REST framework

API via DRF

The DRF provides us with a GUI that we can use to perform CRUD operations on our data and view the JSON information as well.

Tasks

Finally, the last feature integrated into the application is the task scheduler, which allows you to schedule a particular task with a set time interval. Rocket Django uses Celery for this purpose. Celery runs time-consuming tasks in the background without slowing down your application or making it unresponsive.

Support

In case of any queries, you can join our Discord server or email us at support@appseed.us