Revisiting https://www.pn.therealvan.com/2021/01/24/postgresql-and-mysql-docker-containers/, this post focuses on a plain Django app with minimal dependencies:

• exclude pipenv
• using the default SQLite DB

Bootstrapping

Start with these files:

Dockerfile

FROM python:3
ENV PYTHONUNBUFFERED 1

WORKDIR /code
#COPY requirements.txt /code/

#RUN pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -r requirements.txt

docker-compose.yml

version: '3'
services:
  app:
    build: .
    #command: >
    #  sh -c "python manage.py migrate &&
    #    python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000"
    ports:
      - "8000:8000"
    expose:
      - "8000"
    volumes:
      - ./:/code
    tty: true
    stdin_open: true

Run these to start up a container:

docker-compose build
docker-compose run --rm app /bin/bash

Initializing a Django project

Run these inside the container:

pip install django
pip freeze > requirements.txt

django-admin startproject myproj .
django-admin startapp myapp

exit

Rebuild and start the app

Now uncomment the lines in Dockerfile and docker-compose.yml.

Build the image and restart the container:

docker-compose build

Modify myproj/settings.py to add a line to register myapp to Django:

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    ...
    'myapp.apps.MyappConfig',  # Add this line
]

Now start the app again:

docker-compose up app

This should now bring up the app listening to http://localhost:8000/