HHInventory

A basic Django project set up to run locally and deploy cheaply to AWS via Elastic Beanstalk (single-instance mode).

Stack

• Django 5.2 (LTS)
• gunicorn (app server)
• PostgreSQL via RDS in production, SQLite for local dev
• S3 (via django-storages) for static/media files in production
• Elastic Beanstalk, single-instance environment (no load balancer) — the cheapest standard AWS deployment path for a low-traffic site

Local setup

python -m venv venv
source venv/bin/activate  # venv\Scripts\activate on Windows
pip install -r requirements.txt
cp .env.example .env      # edit DJANGO_SECRET_KEY at minimum
python manage.py migrate
python manage.py runserver

Visit http://127.0.0.1:8000/health/ — should return {"status": "ok"}.

Configuration

All settings are driven by environment variables (see .env.example), loaded from a local .env file in development and from the Elastic Beanstalk environment in production. No secrets are committed to the repo.

Variable	Purpose
DJANGO_SECRET_KEY	Django's SECRET_KEY. Required.
DJANGO_DEBUG	True/False. Always False in production.
DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS	Comma-separated hosts, e.g. your EB domain.
DATABASE_URL	postgres://user:pass@host:5432/dbname. Unset = SQLite.
USE_S3	True to serve static/media from S3.
AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME, AWS_S3_REGION_NAME	S3 bucket for static/media.

Deploying to AWS (Elastic Beanstalk, single-instance)

This avoids the cost of a load balancer / NAT gateway, which is the main line item for a low-traffic site.

1. Create supporting resources

• S3 bucket for static/media (e.g. hhinventory-static). Block public access as appropriate; static files can be served via the bucket's regional endpoint or fronted later with CloudFront.
• RDS PostgreSQL, free-tier eligible instance class (db.t3.micro / db.t4g.micro), in the same VPC/region you'll deploy to. Note the connection string for DATABASE_URL.

2. IAM

Attach a policy to the EB environment's EC2 instance profile granting it s3:GetObject, s3:PutObject, s3:ListBucket, s3:DeleteObject on the static/media bucket only. The app uses this instance role automatically — no AWS access keys are stored anywhere in the app or environment variables.

3. Initialize and create the environment

pip install awsebcli
eb init -p python-3.12 hhinventory
eb create hhinventory-env --single --instance-type t3.micro

--single creates a single-instance environment (no load balancer).

4. Set environment variables

eb setenv DJANGO_SECRET_KEY=... DJANGO_DEBUG=False \
  DJANGO_ALLOWED_HOSTS=your-env.elasticbeanstalk.com \
  DATABASE_URL=postgres://user:pass@your-rds-endpoint:5432/dbname \
  USE_S3=True AWS_STORAGE_BUCKET_NAME=hhinventory-static AWS_S3_REGION_NAME=us-east-1

5. Deploy

eb deploy

Migrations and collectstatic run automatically on deploy via .ebextensions/django.config.

6. Create a Django superuser (one-time)

eb ssh
# Load EB env vars, then:
sudo bash -lc 'set -a; . /opt/elasticbeanstalk/deployment/env; set +a; source /var/app/venv/*/bin/activate; cd /var/app/current; python manage.py createsuperuser'

7. Custom domain (ahhrbsupply.ca) + HTTPS

Already configured on AWS

• EB allows hosts ahhrbsupply.ca / www.ahhrbsupply.ca
• Route 53 hosted zone with A records → Elastic IP 54.176.120.158

At your domain registrar, set the nameservers to:

ns-288.awsdns-36.com
ns-912.awsdns-50.net
ns-1290.awsdns-33.org
ns-1937.awsdns-50.co.uk

DNS can take from a few minutes up to 24–48 hours. Until then the app remains at http://hhinventory-env.eba-q8ecm7sw.us-west-1.elasticbeanstalk.com/.

Cheapest HTTPS (Cloudflare Free) — after nameservers work, or instead of Route 53 DNS:

1. Add ahhrbsupply.ca to Cloudflare (free plan).
2. If Cloudflare gives you different nameservers, use those at the registrar instead (and you can delete the Route 53 zone to avoid the $0.50/mo fee).
3. DNS: proxied A → 54.176.120.158 for @ and www.
4. SSL/TLS mode: Flexible.
5. Then tighten cookies:

eb setenv DJANGO_CSRF_TRUSTED_ORIGINS=https://ahhrbsupply.ca,https://www.ahhrbsupply.ca \
  DJANGO_SESSION_COOKIE_SECURE=True \
  DJANGO_CSRF_COOKIE_SECURE=True \
  DJANGO_SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT=False

Keep DJANGO_SECURE_SSL_REDIRECT=False so EB HTTP health checks still pass.

Project layout

hhinventory/       Project settings, root urls, wsgi/asgi entrypoints
core/               Minimal app; health check endpoint at /health/
.ebextensions/      EB deploy hooks (migrate, collectstatic)
Procfile            Tells EB how to start gunicorn
requirements.txt    Python dependencies
.env.example        Documents required environment variables