Django-Mountaineer Integration

Using Django with a FastAPI application like Mountaineer is pretty straightforward, using FastAPI.mount().

However, there are a few gotchas in fully integrating Django, which this library aims to solve.

Installation & Integration

You can reference the example folder for a complete example of a django project with a mountaineer app.

Mount Django in your Mountaineer app (no library required)

Django can be mounted in a Mountaineer app by adding a few lines to the example/app.py file.

Add to example/app.py (mount django after mountaineer controller registrations):

from django.core.asgi import get_asgi_application
from starlette.staticfiles import StaticFiles
import os

# These 2 lines will initialize django
os.environ.setdefault('DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE', 'backend.settings')
django_app = get_asgi_application()

# Put these lines below your mountaineer controller.register() lines
controller.app.mount("/", django_app, name="app")
# This line is optional, but it mounts the static files from Django to the mountaineer app
# django normally uses /static for this, but this collides with mountaineer, so we should
# point django's STATIC_URL and STATIC_ROOT to /staticfiles
controller.app.mount("/staticfiles", StaticFiles(directory="staticfiles"), name="static")

Run Django and Mountaineer together

You can start the normal Mountaineer development server with the following command, instead of django's runserver:

poetry run runserver

While still using manage.py for most normal django functionality:

poetry run python manage.py migrate
poetry run python manage.py createsuperuser

The django admin will be accessible at http://localhost:5006/admin/. You should view the HomeController at http://localhost:5006/, which shows an example of retrieving resources from Django ORM and returning them via mountaineer SSR.

Extras

Django Sessions and Authentication in FastAPI/Mountaineer

We have 2 options for exposing Django sessions and authentication in FastAPI/Mountaineer:

1. (heavy, more complete) Use django's full middleware stack, by adding the django_mountaineer.DjangoMiddlewareRunner to your FastAPI middleware.
2. (lightweight, less complete) Use django_mountaineer.get_session Dependency Injection, which is an async re-implementation of django's session middleware, for loading the user as a dependency.

Controller Sniffing

If you check my example/example/app.py, you'll see that I'm using a simple controller sniffing mechanism to automatically load the controllers files found within the example/example/views folder. This is a simple django-esque autoloader to adapt to the mountaineer convention and just a personal preference.