I new to the web development.
Right now, I am using Angular 2 as front-end and Django-Rest-framework as back-end. While browsing the tutorials online, people often build the angular2 app (ng build) and then place those built files under the django project. But my question is, doesn't this approach defeat the purpose of decoupling? Can you provide me the pros and cons of these two approaches?
Ask Django to host the built angular project, and deploy it as one instance.
Separate both frontend and backend, and deploy them as two instances.
Thanks in advance.
I don't see a reason to host an Angular app inside a Django project, most apps will separate frontend from backend and deploy them to different servers (at least in my experience) to ensure easier maintenance, that way if your backend has any bugs, you'll have an easier time finding where the bug is and how to fix it.
Mixing both would mean that if for some reason front or backend have any problem, THE WHOLE app will have said problem and result in a bad user experience.
Related
So, I am new to this "monolith vs microservices" architecture debate and I have pretty much understood most of it. From my limited understanding I get it that in microservice architecture each feature(lets say) is a separate app. Now I need some clarification with respect to django for implementing microservices. Heres my question
Should I make every microservice aka the app a different django project altogether OR should I make every app aka the microservice inside one django project and keep them isolated (as in loosely coupled) ?
Microservice architecture simply states that your each service should be independent of each other.
Its also not necessary to create one micro-service in java and one in python since they are not related.
So yes, ideally your each micro-service is a separate django project.
The best way to break this, first list down all the possible modules in your site or app.
Then go through :
https://microservices.io/patterns/decomposition/decompose-by-business-capability.html
https://microservices.io/patterns/decomposition/decompose-by-subdomain.html
These are two recommended pattern of how you should divide modules / domain into micro-services.
well, you can use database routers in django ... that does the trick ... one wSGI file per app communicating with your NGINX server
The main purpose of micro service is to serve the specific business, for example you are running a cloud kitchen then Django project can have many sub projects under one master project or you can run each project as separate service, it up to you.
Service
backoffice
finance
rider
kitchen
now we will set the url for each service like
Endpoints
backoffice.mycompany.com
finance.mycompany.com
rider.mycompany.com
kitchen.mycompany.com
Once our app is up the service load will not effect other service.
The microservice should be completely independent so it should not belong to one Django project. You should be able to deploy each service independently with its own database, so even you split the project into separate apps they still share one physical database and you can not deploy them separately. Therefore, you could potentially create separate Django project for each 'microservice' but this does not make much sense. You put lot of overhead for creating a microservice and also using Django framework is not a best choice for MSA , have a look at Flask.
I am currently creating a website hosted by Django. I plan to use React as my frontend framework. I have done some research on putting them together but most say that I should go for the SPA model and have separate web servers for frontend and backend. The problem is that I wish to use apache as a prod server with django and avoid having 2 separate servers. I have read about the hybrid model and having django serve static files with react.
My Biggest concern is security as I have already setup apache for security and I aware that node.js is somewhat insecure.
What would the best approach be. The separate SPA model or the hybrid model.
I'd say it's okay to go for hybrid model if the project is small and you are the only one working on it and you only want to make things done. I think it's kinda messy to create apps like this unless they don't really worth the time.
But if it's a big project and more than one developer is working on it or will work on it then i highly recommend going with separate web servers one serving frontend app and one django app.
Also note that you don't really need 2 different servers. You can use one server for both and use 2 different which is still not necessary and you can use one web server to serve both.
And security not something that different models can cause to downgrade or upgrade. It's up to you to configure the server and write both frontend and backend apps secure enough to do the work for you.
There are more than one web servers that are as secure as they can be and they work with both django and react pretty well. I used nginx many times to host both django and react apps and i had no problem causing by nginx itself whatsoever.
And for last piece of advice if you will; Creating good quality apps requires a lot of time and energy, working with different technologies that do really good for what they are made for and if you are planning to be a really good developer you should come out of your comfort zone and adapt with new technologies that comes out and they are coming out pretty rapidly which requires you to learn constantly and do things in way you are not used to yet and making things work even if they doesn't seem to be good together at the first look.
I am using reactjs for frontend and Django REST API for the backened. What is the best possible way to integrate both?
which of these two is a good option?
Running two servers for frontend and backend?
or
replacing django templates with reactjs?
Your help is highly appreciated.
Few options here
Django templates with react.
Not my preferred method. Essentially, you are blending django templating and jsx. The benefit here is low over head. It requires little configuration and allows you to write react and leverage the django templating language in the same file. If you need to get something up and running quickly, its a great solution. Have a look at this library https://github.com/Frojd/django-react-templatetags
Using django webpack loader
This will allow you to separate your react code from django code but still keep all your code to one repository. You need to configure django settings to find your react code. Then on your prod/dev server, have your web server point to the directory where your static react code lives or write a django url and view that will serve the react apps index file. It will be located in /static/ after you configure correctly and run python manage.py collectstatics. Benefits here are that it keeps the code to one repository but still isolates the python and javascript code. This is a middleground solution of the three. Quick note. You won't have react hot reload with this method for development. Here is the library that helps you configure this setup https://github.com/owais/django-webpack-loader
Having 2 separate applications
Similar to what you are doing right now, have a separate react repository, either served by a nodejs backend or deploy the code to a cdn service like amazon s3 and serve the one page app from there. And then as its counterpart, have your django app on a separate server with its consumable rest api (will need to configure allowed cors) . This method requires a lot of operational work: deploying, configuring, and management of 2 separate code bases. If you have the time and resources I do recommend this setup. The decoupling of the 2 apps allows this solution to scale the best
What do you mean two servers? You mean two projects/repositories?
Yes, you can keep frontend in the separate project. It make sence if you have multiple clients for your backend (like mobile apps and web). Different developers can have permission to edit only their repositories. Also it make sence if you are going to use some microservices structure for your project. But more simpliest way is to keep frontend and backed in the same project. Try to check some tutorial about Django+reactjs apps.
I've built out a basic django application, and I'm looking to incorporate react+redux into the app. I've come across several react+redux templates like the react-redux-starter-kit and redux-webpack-es6-boilerplate:
These are awesome, except they both run node servers. I'm wondering:
Does there exist some sort of a tutorial or template that has the same features (webpack, Hot Module Replacement, linting, testing, abides by Fractal Project Structure guidelines, etc...) but does not run a node server, so I can just copy it into my django application (I realize I'd have to do a fair bit of configuration to get everything working smoothly).
Is it ok to run the webpack server within my django application? (Basically node would be running within django) Are there any downsides in doing this?
I've tried altering the above two templates, but they are pretty dense and complicated. Any advice would be very much appreciated!
I don't see any reason to mixing up django and react app.
I would prever leave them as two independent parts of your application: SPA (react + redux) + API (django)
If you already have django app and just need to add some react pages into, then build react app as static files and place it outside your django project, and configure your reverse proxy server (nginx) to load those new pages as static pages (react).
I'm fairly new to both Django and Angular. I recognize this is subjective and there are likely many ways to do it, but I'm wondering what best practices people can recommend for laying out such an application. I'm specifically thinking of the case of rich, SPA with the backend being mostly or entirely a RESTful API server, but then I'd like to have a common approach for any apps that serve significant views from Django. (I haven't done enough to decide if the latter warrants using Angular or may be more trouble than its worth).
Specifically:
What are pros/cons of maintaining the front-end code in a separate directory/repository from the backend versus, say, inside a "static" subdirectory of the Django app? In my case I'm the sole developer for now, which has some impact on this decision, but I can still consider myself separate "teams" of back-end, front-end, designer, etc. in the sense that my workflow will put me in one of these roles at a time.
My setup is basically a development machine, SCM in GitHub, and hosted publicly on WebFaction (shared web hosting). I will down the line want to easily grab projects on different development machines, but the primary workflow is just one dev, one prod installation. That said, I'm interested in best practices in real-world projects as I hope a future job may be working with Django.
ADDED: Another point I'm very unsure about is whether the Angular app should/must be bootstrapped by Django. That is, should the front page be served by Django and injected with any data?
PROS:
Can configure URL paths and even API endpoints that change from dev to production, without any alternate config and without these being hard-coded in front-end.
This is maybe necessary for authentication? Unclear to me having not done this yet...
Allows use of tools like the Django debug toolbar app.
CONS:
Couples the front-end to the back-end. What If I want to swap out the latter? What if I want the front-end to work in a sandbox with mock data?
Seems to strongly favor moving all Angular stuff into the Django app layout. At the same time, I don't like having a mix of Angular partials in one place and Django template(s) in another. I am already resolved not to mix NG and DJ templates, as I don't believe much good will come of this.
I also started as solo developer on Django as BE with AngularJS FE. I've put AngularJS files in static folder and everything is fine.
Cons are definitely that you have FE and BE mixed up in one project, but I think that shouldn't matter since you are solo developer. Even if you decide once to hire additional developer (to split FE and BE work) your work wouldn't have any conflicts since one of you would work totally independent.
One of the pros for me is definitely I did entire login process via Django (templating as well) and once login went fine I served rest of the FE (entire AngularJS part).
For Django REST I've used TastyPie. It's great REST enhancement for Django and easy to set up.