how to nginx virtual servers + fcgi for django?

There have been two pretty good blog posts lately about setting up nginx, but both are using nginx to serve static (or cached) content and apache + mod_wsgi to serve Django. I prefer this myself because mod_wsgi makes process management so much easier than fcgi (among other advantages).

Anyway, here are the posts:

• The Django and Ubuntu Intrepid Almanac
• django, nginx, memcached - the dynamic trio

EDIT: ok I dug out an old tar file with my nginx + django + virtual host config files from a year ago before I switched to apache + mod_wsgi. This was a development machine, so you'll want to adjust # of workers, connections, etc.

nginx.conf:

user nginx nginx;worker_processes 2;error_log /var/log/nginx/error_log info;events {    worker_connections  1024;    use epoll;}http {    include         /etc/nginx/mime.types;default_type    application/octet-stream;log_format main            '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] '    '"$request" $status $bytes_sent '            '"$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" '    '"$gzip_ratio"';client_header_timeout   3m;client_body_timeout     3m;send_timeout            3m;connection_pool_size            256;client_header_buffer_size       1k;large_client_header_buffers     4 2k;request_pool_size               4k;gzip on;gzip_min_length 1100;gzip_buffers    4 32k;gzip_types      text/plain text/html application/x-javascript text/xml text/css;output_buffers  4 32k;postpone_output 1460;sendfile        on;tcp_nopush      on;tcp_nodelay     on;keepalive_timeout       75 20;ignore_invalid_headers  on;include vhosts.d/*.conf;}

So, the main nginx.conf includes every file in the vhosts.d/ subdirectory. One of my files was for serving PHP on localhost (was probably running phpMyAdmin) like this:

vhosts.d/00_localhost:

server {  listen 127.0.0.1:80;  server_name localhost;  access_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.access_log main;  error_log /var/log/nginx/localhost.error_log info;  root /var/www/localhost/htdocs;  index index.php index.html index.htm;    location ~ .php$ {        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:8888;        fastcgi_index  index.php;        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www/localhost/htdocs$fastcgi_script_name;        fastcgi_param  QUERY_STRING     $query_string;        fastcgi_param  REQUEST_METHOD   $request_method;        fastcgi_param  CONTENT_TYPE     $content_type;        fastcgi_param  CONTENT_LENGTH   $content_length;  }}

And then a local Django development server like this:

50_django.local:

server {  listen  80;  server_name django.local;  access_log /var/log/nginx/django.access.log main;  error_log /var/log/nginx/django.error.log info;  root /var/www/django.local;  location ~* ^.+\.(mpg|avi|mp3|swf|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|rtf|mpeg)$ {    access_log off;    break;  }  location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|bmp|js)$ {    expires 30d;    break;  }  location / {    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/www/django.local/server.sock;    include fastcgi.conf;  }  location ^~ /admin/ {    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/www/django.local/server.sock;    include fastcgi.conf;    access_log off;    auth_basic "Welcome to admin";  }}

Finally, each of the virtual servers included a fastcgi.conf for each location.

fastcgi.conf:

fastcgi_pass_header Authorization;fastcgi_intercept_errors off;fastcgi_param PATH_INFO         $fastcgi_script_name;fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD    $request_method;fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING      $query_string;fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE      $content_type;fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH    $content_length;fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT       $server_port;fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL   $server_protocol;fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME       $server_name;fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI       $request_uri;fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI      $document_uri;fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT     $document_root;fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR       $server_addr;fastcgi_param REMOTE_USER       $remote_user;fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR       $remote_addr;fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT       $remote_port;fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE   "nginx";fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE "CGI/1.1";fastcgi_param UID_SET           $uid_set;fastcgi_param UID_GOT           $uid_got;

I'm not sure all of the above were required, but that was another one of the reasons I switched to mod_wsgi... superior support and documentation :)

Since this question was asked someone created a pip installable django package that will generate an apache or nginx vhost file for you from your settings.py

pip install django-vhost

Check it out here: https://bitbucket.org/djangostars/django-vhost