MAMP with mod_wsgi

Once you get a database set up, sqlite or otherwise, you can use it with Django applications. You can serve Django directly from a command line or through Apache. In either case you will need Django to be installed. From a command line, simply run the django server and browse to it:

django-admin.py runserver

If your production server is going to be Apache, your best bet is to run Django under Apache locally. To do this you need a helper library for Apache to use. The de facto solution is mod_wsgi.

mod_wsgi

To get started with mod_wsgi, typically you download mod_wsgi from Graham Dumpleton's Google Code repository, you go to your command line, you untar it, you configure it, you make it and you make install it. This makes the code library available to wsgi-enabled services, in effect allowing you to run Django on Apache.

When you make install mod_wsgi, it places the libraries in your /lib directory. Then it links to your Apache directory where OSX keeps it, /usr/libexec/apache2. Installation includes automatic detection, or you can use some optional flags to specify resource paths, detailed in the wsgi installation guidelines.

Now your OSX Apache has modwsgi installed, but the Apache version in MAMP does not. To verify this, try making a Django app and serving it via MAMP. First, make a new django app in an appropriate directory:

django-admin.py startproject myproject

Next, open and modify the config for your MAMP Apache app, located in /Applications/Mamp/conf/apache/httpd.conf. For that matter, have a look at what your OSX Apache instance has in its config file. It is private/etc/apache2/httpd.conf. Searching for wsgi in this file yields:

LoadModule wsgi_module libexec/apache2/mod_wsgi.so

Looks good even if the relative directory location may be an issue. Insert this info into the MAMP httpd.conf and test it. Actually, there is no need because it will not work. This is due to the structure of MAMP and its proprietary use of Apache. Unlike a full install of Apache, the folders in MAMP have a different structure and are optimized to run modularly. Consequently, you cannot append a flag to your configure command in this manner:

./configure --with-apxs=/usr/sbin/apxs2-worker

because the structure available to Apache is not in MAMP, so detection will fail.

This leaves a couple of options. Either reconstruct some of the MAMP Apache folders so detection will succeed or look for another solution. Considering the evident lack of general success from many Google searches, I am letting this fish off the hook. Feel free to leave a comment if you know a way to make it work.

As a final consideration, mod_python appears to be a lot quicker to set up with MAMP. That could be a candidate if you are in a pinch. Otherwise, if serving Python via Apache is your goal, I recommend using the resources included with OS X and skipping MAMP altogether.