Error while deploying Django on Apache

Question

I have a small Django website which I am trying to run on an Apache 2.2 HTTP-Server. The application is running fine using "python manage.py runserver".

Django Version: 1.0.2 final
Python: 2.5
OS: Windows 2000

I wen't through the steps described in the documentation and after some fiddling, came out with the following in my httpd.conf.

<Location "/therap/">
SetHandler python-program
PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE settings
PythonOption django.root /therap
PythonDebug On
PythonPath "['D:/therap/therap'] + sys.path"
</Location>

MaxRequestsPerChild 1

D:\therap\therap beeing the place where my manage.py is.

When I try to open in my browser, I see an error in the style used by Django (as opposed to black courier on white background.)

ImportError at /

No module named therap.urls

Request Method: GET
Request URL:    http://****:8080/
Exception Type: ImportError
Exception Value:   

No module named therap.urls

Exception Location: C:\python25\lib\site-packages\django\core\urlresolvers.py in _get_urlconf_module, line 200
Python Executable:  C:\Programme\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\bin\httpd.exe
Python Version:     2.5.1
Python Path:        ['D:/therap/therap', 'C:\\WINNT\\system32\\python25.zip', 'C:\\Python25\\Lib', 'C:\\Python25\\DLLs', 'C:\\Python25\\Lib\\lib-tk', 'C:\\Programme\\Apache Software Foundation\\Apache2.2', 'C:\\Programme\\Apache Software Foundation\\Apache2.2\\bin', 'C:\\Python25', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\pyserial-2.2', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\win32', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\win32\\lib', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\Pythonwin', 'C:\\Python25\\lib\\site-packages\\wx-2.8-msw-unicode']
Server time:        Mo, 23 Mär 2009 16:27:03 +0100

There is a urls.py in D:\therap\therap. However there is none in D:\therap\therap\main where most of my code is.

I then tried using the parent folder

<Location "/therap/">
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE therap.settings
    PythonOption django.root /therap
    PythonDebug On
    PythonPath "['D:/therap'] + sys.path"

</Location>

MaxRequestsPerChild 1

Which gave me a different error:

MOD_PYTHON ERROR

ProcessId:      2424
Interpreter:    '***'

ServerName:     '****'
DocumentRoot:   'C:/Programme/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs'

URI:            '/therap/'
Location:       '/therap/'
Directory:      None
Filename:       'C:/Programme/Apache Software Foundation/Apache2.2/htdocs/therap'
PathInfo:       '/'

Phase:          'PythonHandler'
Handler:        'django.core.handlers.modpython'

Traceback (most recent call last):

  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\mod_python\importer.py", line 1537, in HandlerDispatch
    default=default_handler, arg=req, silent=hlist.silent)

  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\mod_python\importer.py", line 1229, in _process_target
    result = _execute_target(config, req, object, arg)

  File "C:\Python25\Lib\site-packages\mod_python\importer.py", line 1128, in _execute_target
    result = object(arg)

  File "C:\Python25\lib\site-packages\django\core\handlers\modpython.py", line 228, in handler
    return ModPythonHandler()(req)

  File "C:\Python25\lib\site-packages\django\core\handlers\modpython.py", line 201, in __call__
    response = self.get_response(request)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\core\handlers\base.py", line 67, in get_response
    response = middleware_method(request)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\middleware\locale.py", line 17, in process_request
    translation.activate(language)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\utils\translation\__init__.py", line 73, in activate
    return real_activate(language)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\utils\translation\trans_real.py", line 209, in activate
    _active[currentThread()] = translation(language)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\utils\translation\trans_real.py", line 198, in translation
    default_translation = _fetch(settings.LANGUAGE_CODE)

  File "C:\python25\Lib\site-packages\django\utils\translation\trans_real.py", line 183, in _fetch
    app = __import__(appname, {}, {}, [])

ImportError: No module named main

I do use the internationalization module, but I do not see why it causes a problem at this point.

"main" is the name of the only Django app (containing views, models, forms and such). The full path is D:\therap\therap\main.

I put __init__.py-files everywhere from the main folder to d:\therap.

Now I don't know what else I could do. Any ideas?

Answer 1

The problem is that you are importing your app ("main") as if it lives directly on the Python path, and your URLconf ("therap.urls") as if it lives within a "therap" module on the Python path. This can only work if both "D:/therap" and "D:/therap/therap" are BOTH on the Python path (which runserver does for you automatically to "make things easy"; though it ends up just delaying the confusion until deployment time). You can emulate runserver's behavior by using the following line in your Apache config:

PythonPath "['D:/therap', 'D:/therap/therap'] + sys.path"

It probably makes more sense to standardize your references so your Python path only need include one or the other. The usual way (at least the way I see referenced more often) would be to put "D:\therap" on the Python path and qualify your app as "therap.main" instead of just "main". Personally, I take the opposite approach and it works just fine: put "D:\therap\therap" on your Python path and set ROOT_URLCONF to "urls" instead of "therap.urls". The advantage of this is that if in future you want to make your "main" app reusable and move it out of the particular project, your references to it aren't tied to the project name "therap" (though with an app named "main" it doesn't sound like you're thinking in terms of reusable apps anyway).