Issues deploying django-nvd3 charts on heroku - django

Question

Did any one try to deploy django-nvd3 charts on to Heroku recently with success? I was trying to deploy django application using nvd3 charts on to heroku the whole weekend with no luck. It works perfectly fine in my dev enviornment (ubuntu). However when I try to push it to Heroku, am facing all sorts of errors.
on Dev environment I installed npm (this includes node.js) and later installed bower and finally installed django-bower; as suggested on https://github.com/areski/django-nvd3. I tried different charts and all work okay, with no issues
However, when I was trying to push the code over to Heroku, I was hitting quite a few errors. Fixing one leads to others. I was wondering, if I need to add a package.json (to list npm dependencies like bower) and bower.json (to list bower dependencies like d3, nvd3) files to my repo, in the first place?
I googled a lot for some documentation that gives gun-shot info on this(django, nvd3, bower, npm/node all married together), but couldn't see any
Note: I will try to post heroku logs for more info.
bower.json is given something like:
{
"dependencies": {
"d3": "3.3.6",
"nvd3": "1.1.12-beta"
}
package.json is given something like:
"engines": {
"node": "0.11.11",
"npm": "1.3.25"
},
"dependencies": {
"bower": "1.3.1"
}
Errors I encountered are something like:
1. gunicorn is not recognized - resolved this
2. NameError: Name 'DATABASES' is not defined in settings.py - resolved this
3. django.core.management is not found - resolved this
4. Git error: fatal: HEAD corrupted/ cannot be deployed on to heroku - resolved this
5. listening at localhost 127.0.0.1:8000 - am working on this. I think this is also to do with my DATABASES setting that is pointing at dj_database_url.config(default=['DATABASE_URL'])??
Is there any Git repo with django+nvd3charts that is deployed successfully on to Heroku? Can I have a look at the configuration?
Also looking at https://github.com/areski/django-nvd3; I do not see any bower dependencies or npm dependencies listed here, does it work like this?
Or, can Heroku automatically install npm/bower without package.json and also can it look at settings.py file and by looking at bower dependencies, does Heroku also install those dependencies with out a need for bower.json file to specifically listing d3, nvd3 as dependencies? I suppose its not the case, as far as I could see
Please suggest

Answer 1

I wrote a blog post about this which you find here: https://mattdoesstuff.wordpress.com/2015/04/10/getting-npm-d3-nvd3-django-bower-django-bower-nvd3-and-heroku-to-play-nicely-together/
Use django-nvd3 and django-bower
pip install django-nvd3 django-bower
pip freeze > requirements.txt
git add .
git commit -m "don't forget your requirements.txt!"
Use a multi-buildpack
heroku config:set BUILDPACK_URL=https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-buildpack-multi.git
Use the Node and Python buildpacks together
# ./.buildpacks
https://github.com/heroku/heroku-buildpack-nodejs.git
https://github.com/amanjain/heroku-buildpack-python-with-django-bower.git
Download bower using npm
# ./package.json
{"private": true,"dependencies": {"bower": "1.4.1"}}
User django-bower to collect its assets
# ./bin/post_compile
# install bower components
./manage.py bower_install
Tell django where to find bower
# settings.py
...
import os
APPLICATION_DIR = os.path.dirname(globals()['__file__'])
HEROKU = bool(os.environ.get('DATABASE_URL'))
BOWER_COMPONENTS_ROOT = os.path.join(APPLICATION_DIR, 'components')
# where to find your local bower
BOWER_PATH = '/usr/local/bin/bower'
if HEROKU:
BOWER_PATH = '/app/node_modules/bower/bin/bower'
BOWER_INSTALLED_APPS = (
'd3#3.3.13',
'nvd3#1.7.1',
)
...
Credits
* http://www.rawsrc.com/using-django-bower-on-heroku/
* https://github.com/ddollar/heroku-buildpack-multi.git
* https://github.com/areski/django-nvd3