Django and SSL question

Question

I am planning to sell products by charging credit cards thus using SSL will be critical for Django-powered website. And I am very naive for this.

My initial django s

Answer 1

I have deployed Django apps on SSL using Apache's mod_ssl and mod_wsgi.

I am no Apache expert, but here's how I setup SSL for one site (put the directives below in the httpd.conf file, or in a file referenced from that file, for instance in the sites-enabled directory, if that is used in your Apache installation). See the first documentation link below for how to create and use a self-signed certificate.

NameVirtualHost *:443
<VirtualHost *:443>
    SSLEngine On
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/apache2/ssl/certificatefile.crt
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/apache2/ssl/certificatekeyfile.crt

    WSGIScriptAlias / /path/to/file.wsgi
</VirtualHost>

Documentation links:

• Apache self signed certificate HOWTO: http://www.perturb.org/display/entry/754/
• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_ssl.html
• http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/ssl/
• Using mod_wsgi to host Django: http://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/deployment/modwsgi/

Answer 2

Django doesn't handle the SSL stuff. Apache will take care of that for you transparently and Django will work as usual. You can check for SSL in a view with request.is_secure().

However you must serve links where appropriate as https urls. You also may want to redirect certain http pages to https pages (like the django admin screen).

Answer 3

For those coming through Google, heres an example config for Nginx:

server {
    listen 443 ssl default;
    server_name example.com;
    ssl on;
    ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/server.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/server.key;
    add_header  Cache-Control "public, must-revalidate";
    # add_header  Cache-Control "no-cache";
    expires     1d;
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=2592000; includeSubdomains";

    location / {
        fastcgi_pass   localhost:8000;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
        fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
        fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_PORT        $server_port;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_NAME        $server_name;
        fastcgi_param  SERVER_PROTOCOL    $server_protocol;
        fastcgi_pass_request_headers on;
        # include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location /static {
        root /home/myapp/application;
    }

    location = /favicon.ico {
        root /home/myapp/application/assets;
        access_log off;
        log_not_found off;
    }

}