Connect a Django application to Neon

To connect to Neon from a Django application:

1. Create a Neon project
2. Configure Django connection settings

Create a Neon project

If you do not have one already, create a Neon project. Save your connection details including your password. They are required when defining connection settings.

To create a Neon project:

1. Navigate to the Projects page in the Neon Console.
2. Click New Project.
3. Specify your project settings and click Create Project.

Configure Django connection settings

Connecting to Neon requires configuring database connection settings in your Django project's settings.py file.

In your Django project, navigate to the DATABASES section of your settings.py file and modify the connection details as shown:

# Add these at the top of your settings.py
from os import getenv
from dotenv import load_dotenv

# Replace the DATABASES section of your settings.py with this
DATABASES = {
  'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.postgresql',
    'NAME': getenv('PGDATABASE'),
    'USER': getenv('PGUSER'),
    'PASSWORD': getenv('PGPASSWORD'),
    'HOST': getenv('PGHOST'),
    'PORT': getenv('PGPORT', 5432),
    'OPTIONS': {
      'sslmode': 'require',
    },
    'DISABLE_SERVER_SIDE_CURSORS': True,
  }
}

You can find all of the connection details listed above in the Connection Details widget on the Neon Dashboard. For more information, see Connect from any application.

For additional information about Django project settings, see Django Settings: Databases, in the Django documentation.

Connection issues

• Django uses the psycopg2 driver as the default adapter for Postgres. If you have an older version of that driver, you may encounter an Endpoint ID is not specified error when connecting to Neon. This error occurs if the client library used by your driver does not support the Server Name Indication (SNI) mechanism in TLS, which Neon uses to route incoming connections. The psycopg2 driver uses the libpq client library, which supports SNI as of v14. You can check your psycopg2 and libpq versions by starting a Django shell in your Django project and running the following commands:

  # Start a Django shell
  python3 manage.py shell
  
  # Check versions
  import psycopg2
  print("psycopg2 version:", psycopg2.__version__)
  print("libpq version:", psycopg2._psycopg.libpq_version())

  The version number for libpq is presented in a different format, for example, version 14.1 will be shown as 140001. If your libpq version is less than version 14, you can either upgrade your psycopg2 driver to get a newer libpq version or use one of the workarounds described in our Connection errors documentation. Upgrading your psycopg2 driver may introduce compatibility issues with your Django or Python version, so you should test your application thoroughly.

• If you encounter an SSL SYSCALL error: EOF detected when connecting to the database, this typically occurs because the application is trying to reuse a connection after the Neon compute has been suspended due to inactivity. To resolve this issue, try one of the following options:

  • Set your Django CONN_MAX_AGE setting to a value less than or equal to the scale to zero setting configured for your compute.
  • Enable CONN_HEALTH_CHECKS by setting it to true. This forces a health check to verify that the connection is alive before executing a query.

  For information configuring Neon's Scale to zero setting, see Configuring Scale to zero for Neon computes.

Schema migration with Django

For schema migration with Django, see our guide:

• Django Migrations

  Schema migration with Neon Postgres and Django

Django application blog post and sample application

Learn how to use Django with Neon Postgres with this blog post and the accompanying sample application.

• Blog Post: Using Django with Neon

  Learn how to build a Django application with Neon Postgres

• Django sample application

  Django with Neon Postgres

Community resources

• Django Project: Build a Micro eCommerce with Python, Django, Neon Postgres, Stripe, & TailwindCSS