2. Django integration and configuration

2.1. Integration

In your settings.py file, you need to add tornado_websockets to your Django INSTALLED_APPS :

INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    'tornado_websockets',
]

2.2. Configuration

Since we use Tornado as a replacement of a WSGI server (Gunicorn, uWSGI, ...), you need to configure it a bit before using django-tornado-websockets.

2.2.1. Basic configuration

You can provide a Tornado configuration in your settings.py file like this:

# At the end of settings.py file

TORNADO = {
    'port': 1337,    # 8000 by default
    'handlers': [],  # [] by default
    'settings': {},  # {} by default
}

1. port is the port which Tornado main loop will listen for its HTTPServer,
2. handlers is a list of tuples where you can make a link between a route and an handler,
3. settings is a dictionary used to customize various aspects of Tornado (autoreload, debug, ...).

Read more about Tornado handlers and settings in the Tornado documentation: Application configuration

2.2.2. Django support

To makes Django work with Tornado, you need to add a new handler to Tornado configuration. Tornado can runs WSGI apps (like Django) by using tornado.wsgi.WSGIContainer, and we provide an already defined Django WSGI app that you can easily use.

You can also make your own Django WSGI app using the tornado_websockets/__init__.py file.

import tornado_websockets

# ...

TORNADO = {
    # ...
    'handlers': [
        # ...
        tornado_websockets.django_app(),  # django_app is using a "wildcard" route, so it should be the last element
    ],
}

2.2.3. Static files support

If you need static files support during your development (so you are not running a configured nginx/Apache for static files), you can add another handler to your configuration:

import tornado.web

# ...

# Django specific configuration about static files
STATIC_URL = '/static/'
STATIC_ROOT = os.path.join(BASE_DIR, 'static')

TORNADO = {
    # ...
    'handlers': [
        (r'%s(.*)' % STATIC_URL, tornado.web.StaticFileHandler, {'path': STATIC_ROOT}),
        # ...
    ]
}

2.2.4. Additional settings

You can pass additional settings to Tornado with TORNADO['settings'] dictionary. For example, it can be useful to set 'debug': True row if you are still in a development phase:

TORNADO = {
    # ...
    'settings': {
        'debug': True,
    }
}