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Test the AWS setup locally

Use docker-compose-aws.yml to build and run the production Docker image on your local machine before deploying to AWS. This exercises Dockerfile-aws, entrypoint-aws.sh, and settings_aws.py — catching configuration issues early.

The app runs on port 8001 so it can coexist with the standard dev environment on port 8000.

Set up

  1. Copy the example env file

    cp ./app/.env.docker-aws-example ./app/.env.docker-aws

  2. Edit .env.docker-aws and set a real SECRET_KEY — don't leave the placeholder value

  3. Build and start the containers

    docker compose -f docker-compose-aws.yml up --build

    The build runs collectstatic and the entrypoint runs migrate automatically on startup.

  4. Verify it's running correctly

    • Browse to http://localhost:8001/admin/ — you should see the Django admin login page (not a 500 or connection error), styled with CSS (not unstyled HTML — confirms collectstatic/whitenoise are working)
    • curl http://localhost:8001/api/v1/ should return a JSON response, not a 404 or 500
    • http://localhost:8001/api/schema/swagger-ui/ should 404(Not Found) — urls_aws.py intentionally excludes schema routes from production

  5. Create a superuser to log into the admin interface (in a separate terminal)

    docker compose -f docker-compose-aws.yml exec web python manage.py createsuperuser

    Logging in successfully at http://localhost:8001/admin/ confirms migrations ran and the database is up.

Stop and clean up

docker compose -f docker-compose-aws.yml down

To also remove the database volume:

docker compose -f docker-compose-aws.yml down -v

Network warning

You may see ! Network peopledepot_default Resource is still in use — this is harmless. The containers and volume are already removed. The network is shared with the dev docker-compose.yml stack (the mkdocs container keeps it alive) and will clean up when that stack is stopped.

Gotchas

Warning

  • requirements-aws.txt must be compiled with --python-version 3.10 — compiling locally can resolve packages incompatible with the Docker image's Python version
  • Do not mount ./app/ as a volume — it would bypass collectstatic, the multi-stage build, and settings_aws.py
  • .env.docker-aws sets SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT=False; real production sets it True. Don't flip it to True locally — without SSL it causes an infinite redirect loop
  • drf_spectacular stays in requirements-aws.txt even though it's excluded from INSTALLED_APPS — it's still a runtime import in views.py decorators, and the container crashes without it
  • DEBUG=False is intentional — don't change it; the point of this setup is to test production behavior

Differences from the standard dev environment

docker-compose.yml docker-compose-aws.yml
Image Dev (Dockerfile) Production (Dockerfile-aws)
Server Django runserver gunicorn
Settings settings.py settings_aws.py
Dependencies requirements.txt requirements-aws.txt
App port 8000 8001
DB port 5432 5433
DB volume postgres_data postgres_data_aws
Code reloading Yes (volume mount) No (baked into image)
Schema UI Available Excluded (urls_aws.py)