1. Set up MySQL for a Django Project

SQLite is the default database engine in Django. Here, I am using MySQL for local development.

• Create a database to be used

How to create a MySQL database is beyond the scope of this blog. I have introduced in the blog “Deploy a Django App to AWS”. I use AMPPS stack to configure Apache and MySQL environment, and use phpMyAdmin to new a database named “django”, for local development.

• Configure your application to the database

  This is for local development and personal project only. If you are developing a commercial web application within a team, please use the package python-decouple to protect your sensitive information, like database name, database user, database password, and database host.

Open the webapp/settings.py file, and configure the required database parameters

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
        'NAME': 'django',
        'USER': 'root',
        'PASSWORD': 'mysql',
        'HOST': '',
        'PORT': '3306',
    }
}

Please refer to the official document on database settings, for more detailed setting explanations. Please do not use such a simply username and password pair on a production server.

2. Use GMail as a free SMTP server

• Add following into the settings.py (or, settings_local.py, depending on your project setups) file:

Again, the sensitive information can be protected using the aforementioned python-decouple package.

EMAIL_BACKEND = 'django.core.mail.backends.smtp.EmailBackend'
EMAIL_USE_TLS = True
EMAIL_HOST = 'smtp.gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_USER = 'test@gmail.com'
EMAIL_HOST_PASSWORD = 'test'
EMAIL_PORT = 587

• And in the views.py file

from django.core.mail import EmailMessage

email = EmailMessage('title', 'body', to=[email])
email.send()

• Further more, remember to unlock Captcha over your Gmail account at :

https://accounts.google.com/DisplayUnlockCaptcha

Also go to https://myaccount.google.com/security#connectedapps to enable Allow less secure apps. If not, you will be encountering SMTPAuthenticationError.

For transitional Email settings using a 3-rd party service, e.g. AWS SES(Simple Email Service), I will write a blog later.