Production-Grade Django Starter Kit

A batteries-included, modular boilerplate and development environment for Django 4.2+ and Django REST Framework (DRF). Pre-configured with Docker Compose, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, Celery (asynchronous workers + scheduler), and Swagger / OpenAPI interactive documentation.

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📑 Table of Contents

• Architecture Overview
• Key Features
• Project Directory Layout
• One-Command Quickstart
• Environment Configuration
• Services & Ports Reference
• Common Development Commands
• Author & Community
• License

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🏛️ Architecture Overview

flowchart TD
    Client([Client / Frontend / Browser]) -->|HTTP :8000| Django[Django REST API Core]
    Django -->|Docs / API Schema| Swagger[Swagger / OpenAPI UI]
    Django -->|Relational Data| Postgres[(PostgreSQL Database)]
    Django -->|Full-Text Search| ES[(Elasticsearch Engine)]
    Django -->|Dispatch Async Job| Broker[(Redis / RabbitMQ Broker)]
    Broker --> Worker[Celery Worker]
    Beat[Celery Beat Scheduler] --> Broker
    Worker --> Postgres

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🌟 Features

• 🐳 One-Command Docker Setup: No need to install and configure Python, PostgreSQL, Redis, or Elasticsearch manually.
• ⚡ Asynchronous Task Processing: Pre-wired Celery workers and Celery Beat periodic task scheduler.
• 🔍 Full-Text Search Engine: Integrated Elasticsearch service ready for search indexing and fast queries.
• 📖 Self-Documenting REST APIs: Interactive Swagger / OpenAPI documentation at /api/docs/.
• 🗄️ Production PostgreSQL: Resilient relational database layer pre-configured with volume persistence.
• 🛡️ Secure Secret Management: Clean environment segregation using .env templates.

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📂 Project Directory Layout

django-starter-kit/
├── backend/                       # Django project source code
│   ├── apps/                      # Modular Django apps
│   ├── config/                    # Core settings (base, dev, prod), WSGI, ASGI
│   └── manage.py                  # Management script
├── build-process/                 # Docker orchestration assets
│   ├── docker-compose-django-backend.yml
│   ├── Dockerfile
│   └── local.backend.env          # Development environment variables
├── requirements/                  # Split Python dependencies
│   ├── base.txt
│   ├── local.txt
│   └── production.txt
└── README.md

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🚀 One-Command Quickstart

1. Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/codewithmuh/django-starter-kit.git
cd django-starter-kit

2. Configure environment variables

Verify or modify the environment values in build-process/local.backend.env.

3. Spin up all services

docker compose -f "./build-process/docker-compose-django-backend.yml" up -d --build

4. Create an admin user

docker compose -f "./build-process/docker-compose-django-backend.yml" exec web python manage.py createsuperuser

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🔌 Services & Ports Reference

Once running, access the local services via these ports:

Service	Port	Description
Django Backend API	http://localhost:8000/	Main application server
Swagger / OpenAPI Docs	http://localhost:8000/api/docs/	Interactive API sandbox & schema
Django Admin	http://localhost:8000/admin/	Management and database administration
PostgreSQL	localhost:5432	Relational database connection
Elasticsearch	localhost:9200	Search engine HTTP REST interface

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🛠️ Common Development Commands

# View real-time container logs
docker compose -f "./build-process/docker-compose-django-backend.yml" logs -f web

# Run database migrations inside container
docker compose -f "./build-process/docker-compose-django-backend.yml" exec web python manage.py migrate

# Stop all background services
docker compose -f "./build-process/docker-compose-django-backend.yml" down

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👨‍💻 Author

Muhammad Rashid — Backend & Cloud DevOps Engineer, AWS Community Builder.

• 🎥 YouTube: @codewithmuh
• 💼 LinkedIn: Muhammad Rashid
• 🌐 Website: codewithmuh.com · devopsbymuh.com

⭐ If you find this Starter Kit helpful, please star the repository!

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📄 License

This project is open-source under the MIT License.