Container runtime configuration

If you are in a hurry, or just browsing to understand what this project is about, visit the livedemo website.

The basic command to run the Docker container on port 8000 looks like this:

$ docker run -d -p 8000:80 -t ghcr.io/djaodjin/djaoapp/livedemo:2026-02-23

We can browse the public pages to check basic connectivity. Since there are no user accounts in the embed database, we cannot login or do anything useful.

Using a local database

The djaoapp Docker container is meant to be started with a site.conf and credentials configuration files. Typically site-specific configurations, like feature flags, pathnames and URI location of third-party services are stored in site.conf, whereas identification and encryption keys are stored in the credentials file.

To keep things simple, we are going to create the database and site.conf configuration file in a directory on the local filesystem.

$ mkdir -p mounted_config

We can create such database by running the commands:

$ python manage.py migrate --run-syncdb
$ python manage.py createsuperuser
$ mv db.sqlite3 mounted_config

With a db.sqlite3 file created, we then create a site.conf configuration file and define the necessary variables to use our newly created database.

We are going to mount the host directory where the database resides as /app/var in the container, so we set DB_ENGINE and DB_NAME as such:

$ cat mounted_config/site.conf
...
DB_ENGINE="django.db.backends.sqlite3"
DB_NAME="/app/var/db.sqlite3"

Now when we start the container, we mount the host directory where the database and configuration file reside, as we define the environment variable DJAOAPP_SETTINGS_LOCATION to find such configuration files.

$ sudo docker run -d -p 8000:80 -v "${PWD}"/mounted_config:/app/var:z -e DJAOAPP_SETTINGS_LOCATION=/app/var -t ghcr.io/djaodjin/djaoapp/djaoapp:master

Configuring the SMTP settings to send email

If you have setup a local database as explained in the previous section, you will guess correctly that we define the e-mail settings in site.conf.

For example, if we want to use the Django internal in-memory SMTP server instead of an actual SMTP server, thus preventing both 500 errors because of SMTP misconfiguration and e-mails ending up in an inbox, we can use the following definitions:

$ cat mounted_config/site.conf
...
EMAIL_HOST    = "localhost"
EMAIL_PORT    = 1025    # matches SMTP_PORT in test driver
EMAIL_USE_TLS = False
EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.locmem.EmailBackend'

Then, as usual, we start the Docker container as:

$ sudo docker run -d -p 8000:80 -v "${PWD}"/mounted_config:/app/var:z -e DJAOAPP_SETTINGS_LOCATION=/app/var -t ghcr.io/djaodjin/djaoapp/djaoapp:master

Configuring where assets are stored

$ cat mounted_config/site.conf
...
DEFAULT_FILE_STORAGE    = "storages.backends.s3boto3.S3Boto3Storage"
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME = "*bucket_name*"

Then, as usual, we start the Docker container as:

$ sudo docker run -d -p 8000:80 -v "${PWD}"/mounted_config:/app/var:z -e DJAOAPP_SETTINGS_LOCATION=/app/var -t ghcr.io/djaodjin/djaoapp/djaoapp:master

Configuring re-captcha

By default you can configure reCAPTCHA on the registration and contact page using the RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY and RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY configuration variables.

Overriding the backend to send notifications

djaoapp.settings.NOTIFICATION_BACKENDS = ('djaoapp.notifications.backends.NotificationWebhookBackend', 'djaoapp.notifications.backends.NotificationEmailBackend'): The backend to send notifications to users and/or profile managers. The two backend bundled with the project are djaoapp.notifications.backends.NotificationEmailBackend to notify users by e-mail and djaoapp.notifications.backends.NotificationWebhookBackend to POST and event to an URL.

Reference for configuration variables

There exists templates for both credentials and site.conf in the source repository inside the etc directory.

General behavior

Name	Default	Description
SECRET_KEY	random	Key for CSRF protection
DEBUG	False	Enables debug mode when `True`
FEATURES_DEBUG	False	Enable features not quite ready yet

Variable for database connection

Name	Default	Description
DB_ENGINE	“sqlite3”	Database engine (sqlite3, postgresql)
DB_NAME	“db.sqlite”	Name of the database
DB_HOST		Hostname where the database is located
DB_PORT		Port number (on host) to connect to the db
DB_USER	“”	Username to identify with the database
DB_PASSWORD	“”	Password to identify with the database

Variables to manage notifications

Name	Default	Description
NOTIFICATION_WEBHOOK_URL	“”	A URL, or callable function returning an URL, to which a notification event will be posted. ex: http://localhost:8010/postevent
NOTIFICATION_EMAIL_DISABLED	False	A boolean, or callable function that returns a boolean. When `True`, e-mail notifications are disabled site-wide.

Variables to send notification e-mails

Name	Default	Description
EMAIL_BACKEND		Django e-mail backend to use
EMAIL_HOST	“localhost”	Hostname where the SMTP server is located
EMAIL_PORT	25	Port number on the host to connect to the SMTP server
EMAIL_HOST_USER	“”	Username to identify with the SMTP server
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD	“”	Password to identify with the SMTP server
EMAIL_USE_TLS	False	Uses TLS encryption when `True`
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL	“”	Default e-mail used to send notification e-mails

Variable for billing processor

Name	Default	Description
STRIPE_PUB_KEY	“”	Stripe public key
STRIPE_PRIV_KEY	“”	Stripe private key
STRIPE_CLIENT_ID	“”	StripeConnect clientID

Variable for social login

Name	Default	Description
SOCIAL_AUTH_GITHUB_KEY	“”	GitHub OAuth2 key
SOCIAL_AUTH_GITHUB_SECRET	“”	GitHub OAuth2 secret
SOCIAL_AUTH_GOOGLE_OAUTH2_KEY	“”	Google OAuth2 key
SOCIAL_AUTH_GOOGLE_OAUTH2_SECRET	“”	Google OAuth2 secret

Variable for recaptcha

Name	Default	Description
RECAPTCHA_PUBLIC_KEY	“”	Google recaptcha public key
RECAPTCHA_PRIVATE_KEY	“”	Google recaptcha private key