Why django session table growing automatically - django

Question

I am developing a django project using nginx on the production. But when I start running my nginx server, the django_session table on the mysql starts growing. In each resfresh, I see more rows in the table. Why is that happening? Any way to stop this?
Here is my django settings.
import os
import platform
from pathlib import Path
from mydjangoapp import utilities as util
# Build paths inside the project like this: BASE_DIR / 'subdir'.
BASE_DIR = Path(__file__).resolve().parent.parent
# Quick-start development settings - unsuitable for production
# See https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/howto/deployment/checklist/
# SECURITY WARNING: keep the secret key used in production secret!
SECRET_KEY = 'my secret key' #deidentified
# SECURITY WARNING: don't run with debug turned on in production!
DEBUG = True
ALLOWED_HOSTS = ['localhost', '127.0.0.1', 'example.com']
CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS = ['http://localhost', 'http://example.com', 'https://example.com']
# Application definition
INSTALLED_APPS = [
'django.contrib.admin',
'django.contrib.auth',
'django.contrib.contenttypes',
'django.contrib.sessions',
'django.contrib.messages',
'django.contrib.staticfiles',
'django.contrib.humanize',
'mydjangoapp',
'corsheaders',
]
MIDDLEWARE = [
'corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware',
'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
'django.contrib.auth.middleware.AuthenticationMiddleware',
'django.contrib.messages.middleware.MessageMiddleware',
'django.middleware.clickjacking.XFrameOptionsMiddleware',
]
ROOT_URLCONF = 'mydjangoproj.urls'
TEMPLATES = [
{
'BACKEND': 'django.template.backends.django.DjangoTemplates',
'DIRS': [os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'mydjangoapp/templates')],
'APP_DIRS': True,
'OPTIONS': {
'context_processors': [
'django.template.context_processors.debug',
'django.template.context_processors.request',
'django.contrib.auth.context_processors.auth',
'django.contrib.messages.context_processors.messages',
],
},
},
]
WSGI_APPLICATION = 'mydjangoproj.wsgi.application'
# Database
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/ref/settings/#databases
DATABASES = {
'default': {},
'db_magicnote': {
'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
'NAME': 'mydb_test',
'USER': '',
'PASSWORD': '',
'HOST': '',
'PORT': '3306',
'OPTIONS': {
'init_command': "SET sql_mode='STRICT_TRANS_TABLES'",
},
}
}
DATABASE_ROUTERS = ['mydjangoapp.dbRouter.MyDbRouter']
CURRENT_DATABASE = 'db_mydjangoapp'
# Password validation
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/ref/settings/#auth-password-validators
AUTH_PASSWORD_VALIDATORS = [
{
'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.UserAttributeSimilarityValidator',
},
{
'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.MinimumLengthValidator',
},
{
'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.CommonPasswordValidator',
},
{
'NAME': 'django.contrib.auth.password_validation.NumericPasswordValidator',
},
]
# Internationalization
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/topics/i18n/
LANGUAGE_CODE = 'en-us'
TIME_ZONE = 'UTC'
USE_I18N = True
USE_TZ = True
# Static files (CSS, JavaScript, Images)
# https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.0/howto/static-files/
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
#STATICFILES_DIRS = [
# BASE_DIR / "static",
#]
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR,'static/')
# MEDIA
MEDIA_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'media')
MEDIA_URL = '/media/'
LOGIN_REDIRECT_URL = '/'
### SESSION SETTINGS ###
CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE = True
SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE = True
SESSION_EXPIRE_AT_BROWSER_CLOSE = True
USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST = True
SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER = ('HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO', 'https')
And here is my nginx conf settings:
# configuration of the server
server {
# the port your site will be served on
listen 80;
# the domain name it will serve for
server_name example.com;
charset utf-8;
# max upload size
client_max_body_size 75M; # adjust to taste
# Django media
location /media {
alias C:/Users/Administrator/Documents/mydjangoproj/media; # your Django project's media files - amend as required
}
location /static {
alias C:/Users/Administrator/Documents/mydjangoproj/static; # your Django project's static files - amend as required
}
# Finally, send all non-media requests to the Django server.
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080;
}
}

Answer 1

Okay, I've finally figured it out. This has nothing to do with the nginx web server. The health check of my AWS application load balancer was sending request every 5 seconds to my website.
I applied two steps:
1-) I increased the interval value to 300 seconds and timeout value to 120 seconds on the health check configuration (these are their maximum values). This way they don't make frequent request to the server that would increase the size of the django_sessions table significantly.
2-) I've started clearing expired sessions in the django_sessions table. There are a couple of ways to handle that:
a-) On MySQL, you can manually run the following sql:
DELETE FROM mydatabase.django_session where expire_date<now()
b-) Under the Django's main project directory, you can manually run the following command on your terminal:
python manage.py clearsessions
c-) One of these commands can be put in a shell script and scheduled to be run periodically (let's say once every day).
I prefer the python command (item 2) for now. As my userbase grows and the project gets larger, I can think of automating this manual process (the last item).