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Sidewinder Django Starter Kit

repository·master·Indexed 42 days ago

https://github.com/stribny/sidewinder

An opinionated Django starter kit (v0.2.0) designed to accelerate development and simplify VPS deployment. It features a pre-configured stack including GeoDjango, Django REST Framework, django-allauth, Huey for task queuing, and uv for dependency management. Includes Ansible-based deployment, a testing stack with pytest and Playwright, and Docker Compose orchestration for Redis and MailHog.

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What's inside Sidewinder

  1. Overview of Sidewinder Django Starter Kit

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    Sidewinder is an opinionated Django starter kit designed for rapid development and deployment, specifically optimized for single Virtual Private Server (VPS) environments. It provides a pre-configured project structure, development tools, and deployment automation to help developers (such as indie hackers and students) move from project start to production quickly.

    Key focus areas:

    • Developer Experience: Includes linting, formatting, auto-reloading, and debugging tools.
    • Deployment: Ready for VPS deployment using Ansible, Caddy, and Gunicorn on Fedora.
    • Modern Tooling: Uses uv for dependency management and django-environ for configuration.

  2. Core features and included technologies in Sidewinder

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    Sidewinder comes pre-configured with a robust set of technologies to handle common web application requirements:

    • Core Framework: Django (including GeoDjango support) with a custom User model for flexibility.
    • Dependency Management: Uses uv for modern Python dependency management.
    • Configuration: Uses environment variables instead of multiple configuration files.
    • Authentication: django-allauth for email-based and 3rd party authentication.
    • API Development: Django REST Framework (DRF) with modern API docs, standardized error responses, and CORS configuration.
    • Task Queue: Huey for background and periodic tasks.
    • Testing Stack: pytest for unit testing, factoryboy and Faker for test fixtures, and Playwright for end-to-end frontend testing.
    • Logging: Structured logging support.
    • Deployment: Ansible-based deployment to a VPS, including built-in commands for backups and restores.

  3. Database migration considerations during deployment

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    The deployment process automatically runs database migrations. To avoid breaking the application, ensure that new application versions are always compatible with the existing database schema.

    Best Practice: Always move migrations forward. Do not attempt to roll back to previous versions if they are incompatible with the current database schema state.

  4. Sidewinder Core Features and Tech Stack

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    Sidewinder comes pre-configured with several industry-standard libraries across different layers of the application:

    Configuration & Auth

    • Dependency Management: uv
    • Environment Variables: django-environ
    • GeoDjango: Pre-configured support
    • Authentication: Custom User model, django-allauth (email/3rd party), and argon2-cffi for password hashing.

    API & Frontend

    • REST APIs: Django REST Framework with token authentication.
    • API Documentation: drf-spectacular (OpenAPI) and drf-standardized-errors.
    • CORS: django-cors-headers (restricted to API endpoints).
    • Frontend: Bring your own CSS; basic styling for auth/example pages is included.

    Background Tasks

    • Task Queue: huey for background and periodic tasks.
    • Monitoring: django-huey-monitor integrated into Django admin.

    Development & Testing

    • Linting/Formatting: ruff, pre-commit, and bandit (security).
    • Debugging: django-debug-toolbar, django-silk (profiling), snoop, and django-extensions (shell_plus).
    • Testing: pytest (with pytest-django, pytest-xdist, etc.), factoryboy (fixtures), Faker (data), and Playwright (E2E).

  5. Deploy a specific application version

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    To deploy a version other than the default master branch, set the APP_VERSION environment variable to a valid Git identifier (such as a branch name, tag, or commit hash) when running the make deploy command.

    # inside deployment/ansible 
APP_VERSION="v1.0" make deploy

  6. Install developer tooling and dependencies

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    While uv run automatically handles standard dependencies, certain development tools require manual installation steps in the project's root directory.

    Install pre-commit hooks

    To enable automated git hooks via pre-commit:

    uv run -- pre-commit install

    Install Playwright

    To install the necessary browser binaries for Playwright:

    uv run -- playwright install
    # Install pre-commit hooks
uv run -- pre-commit install

# Install Playwright
uv run -- playwright install

  7. Provision a server for Sidewinder

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    To deploy Sidewinder, you must first obtain a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

    Requirements:

    • Operating System: You must choose Fedora Linux as the OS distribution.
    • Access: Ensure you have a working SSH connection to the server.
    • Network: The server should have a static IP address. If using a custom domain with HTTPS, ensure the domain points to your VPS IP.

    It is recommended to use a provider like Digital Ocean that allows pre-configuring the VPS with your public SSH key.

  9. Deploy Sidewinder to a VPS

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    Sidewinder is designed for one-click-style deployment to a single Virtual Private Server (VPS) using an Ansible playbook.

    Deployment Specifications:

    • Operating System: Fedora
    • Database: PostgreSQL
    • Reverse Proxy: Caddy
    • WSGI Server: Gunicorn
    • Process Management: systemd services
    • Capabilities: Includes provided backup and restore commands.

  10. Create a new project from the Sidewinder template

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    Sidewinder is designed to be used as a GitHub template. To start a new project without previous commit history or links to the original repository, go to the Sidewinder repository homepage on GitHub and click the "Use this template" button. This creates a clean repository for your own use.