How to Deploy Django on Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Django is a powerful web framework for Python that makes it easy to create complex web applications. Deploying Django on Google Cloud Platform (GCP) is a great way to quickly get your application up and running. This tutorial will walk you through the steps of setting up a GCP account, creating a virtual machine instance, installing Python 3 and pip, installing Django, configuring the Django project for deployment, and finally deploying the project to GCP using the Google App Engine Flexible Environment.

Step 1: Sign up for a Google Cloud Platform account.

The first step in deploying Django on GCP is to sign up for a GCP account. To do this, go to https://cloud.google.com/ and click the “Sign Up” button. You will then be asked to provide your name, email address, and payment information. Once you have completed the sign-up process, you will be ready to start using GCP.

Step 2: Create a new project in GCP.

Once you have signed up for a GCP account, you can create a new project by clicking the “Create Project” button on the GCP dashboard. You will then be asked to provide a name for your project and select an organization or billing account that will be associated with your project.

Step 3: Enable the Compute Engine API for your project.

Once you have created your project in GCP, you need to enable the Compute Engine API so that you can create virtual machine instances. To do this, go to the “APIs & Services” page in the GCP console and search for “Compute Engine API”. Click on the “Enable” button next to the Compute Engine API listing.

Step 4: Create a virtual machine instance in GCP.

Now that you have enabled the Compute Engine API for your project, you can create a virtual machine instance in GCP. To do this, go to the “Compute Engine” page in the GCP console and click on “Create Instance”. You will then be asked to provide a name for your instance and select an operating system (e.g., Ubuntu 18.04). You can also configure other settings such as memory size and disk size as needed.

Step 5: Connect to the virtual machine instance using SSH.

Once you have created your virtual machine instance in GCP, you need to connect to it using SSH (Secure Shell). To do this, go to the “Compute Engine” page in the GCP console and click on “SSH” next to your instance name. This will open an SSH terminal window where you can enter commands into your virtual machine instance.

Step 6: Install Python 3 and pip on the virtual machine instance.


sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python3 python3-dev python3-venv python3-pip


Now that you are connected to your virtual machine instance via SSH, you can install Python 3 and pip by running the following commands:

Step 7: Install Django using pip.


python3 -m venv myenv
source myenv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install django


Once Python 3 and pip are installed on your virtual machine instance, you can install Django by running the following commands:

Step 8: Create a Django project on the virtual machine instance.


django-admin startproject myproject
cd myproject
python manage.py runserver 0.0.0.0:8000


Now that Django is installed on your virtual machine instance, you can create a new Django project by running the following commands:

Step 9: Configure the Django project for deployment on GCP.


# Add 'gunicorn' package to requirements file.
echo "gunicorn" >> requirements.txt
# Create appengine_config file.
touch appengine_config.py
# Add code snippet below into appengine_config file.
from google.appengine.ext import vendor
vendor.add('lib')


Once your Django project is created, you need to configure it for deployment on GCP by adding gunicorn package into requirements file and creating an appengine_config file with code snippet mentioned above into it.

Step 10: Deploy the Django project to GCP using the Google App Engine Flexible Environment.


# Install gcloud SDK.
curl https://sdk.cloud.google.com | bash