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Whats the best way to update my Django site on DigitalOcean?

Posted on November 16, 2016

I have a basic website that I have in Git, recently I created an Ubuntu droplet here on DO and then cloned my site from git in the new server and finished setting it up running on Nginx.

I have since then made changes to my site locally and pushed the changes to git, what is the best way to update the site on DO now? Should I clone it again from git or upload via ftp or is there another solution?

thank you

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Ryan Quinn

November 16, 2016

Accepted Answer

Either option would work. I would recommend using a git pull to pull the updates to your master branch since this will also clean up any files that have been removed. Using FTP/SFTP would simply copy the new files over the old and would not handle deletions.

If you wanted to take things a step further you could add a script to your site that acts as a webhook. With this in place, merging your changes into the master branch on github could kick off a git pull on your server and keep your live site in sync with the master branch of your git repository.

Janaka Peiris

December 22, 2020

I’ve written a bash script that does it, given that we do not have any changes on server. Feel free to add/comment on improvements:

APP_NAME = Name of Application to display APP_FOLDER = Django project’s GIT root folder

Make sure to give Execute permissions on this script: chmod 777 /home/django/update_app.sh

#!/bin/bash
echo 'Updating <APP_NAME>...'
cd /home/django/<APP_FOLDER>/
source venv/bin/activate

if [ -z "$(git status --untracked-files=no --porcelain)" ]; then 

  if git pull origin master; then
    echo 'GIT PULL completed'
  else
    echo 'GIT PULL failed: exiting program.'
    exit
  fi

  echo 'Upgrading DB to latest...'
  export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=<APP>.settings-prod
  python3 manage.py migrate

  echo 'Restarting servers...'
  sudo systemctl daemon-reload
  sudo service gunicorn restart
  sudo service nginx restart
else
  echo 'There are modified files. Aborting update process..'
fi
echo 'Finished updating.'

nishantsinghrana123

January 6, 2017

i am using the git pull origin master command but it isn’t updating my python files like views, forms etc. All other files like html files are updated

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