Configuring Django Apps for Heroku

Last updated 03 June 2020

The basics

First, and most importantly, Heroku web applications require a Procfile.

This file is used to explicitly declare your application’s process types and entry points. It is located in the root of your repository.

Procfile

web: gunicorn myproject.wsgi

This Procfile requires Gunicorn, the production web server that we recommend for Django applications. For more information, see Deploying Python Applications with Gunicorn.

Installing gunicorn

$ pip install gunicorn

settings.py changes

On Heroku, sensitive credentials are stored in the environment as config vars. This includes database connection information (named DATABASE_URL), which is traditionally hardcoded in Django applications.

The django-heroku package automatically configures your Django application to work on Heroku. It is compatible with Django 2.0 applications.

It provides many niceties, including the reading of DATABASE_URL, logging configuration, a Heroku CI–compatible TestRunner, and automatically configures ‘staticfiles’ to “just work”.

Installing django-heroku:

$ pip install django-heroku

Add the following import statement to the top of settings.py:

import django_heroku

Then add the following to the bottom of settings.py:

# Activate Django-Heroku.
django_heroku.settings(locals())

Deploy, and you should be good to go!