Running a django project in a subdirectory of a site already running Drupal

Question

Hi guys, This problem has been bugging me for the last week or so and now I am coming up on a deadline. I have a site on a Media Temple DV server that is running Drupal in the webroot (servername.org). I am adding a django site and I would like it to be located at the url servername.org/myproject. I have build the project (in a directory not in the webroot) and it is working fine when I run it with the django dev server but I cannot get apache configured to run my django site. I followed this tutorial http://how.4cpus.com/installing-django-on-mt-media-temple-dv-35-server-with-mod_python/

to do the initial setup and configured vhost..conf as explained there. But the Drupal generated .htaccess file keeps grabbing my url and returning a 404 error.

The only work around I have so far is that if I create a subdirectory in webroot called httpdocs/myproject and then goto the url servername.org/myproject it works. But as soon I try to go to any subfolder of myproject (e.g. servername/myproject/login) I get the 404 error again.

Any help here? I know it must be an easy one or two line apache configuration thing but I can't figure it out and I'm running out of ideas.

Here is a snippet from the vhost.conf file:

<Location "/myproject/">
  SetHandler python-program
  PythonPath "['/var/www/vhosts/servename.org/']+sys.path"
  PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
  SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE myproject.settings
  PythonInterpreter myproject
</Location>

And here is the Drupal .htaccess file in webroot (notice the rewirte rule I put in near the end that doesn't appear to do anything):

#
# Apache/PHP/Drupal settings:
#

# Protect files and directories from prying eyes.
<FilesMatch "\.(engine|inc|info|install|module|profile|test|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl|svn-base)$|^(code-style\.pl|Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template|all-wcprops|entries|format)$">
  Order allow,deny
</FilesMatch>

# Don't show directory listings for URLs which map to a directory.
Options -Indexes

# Follow symbolic links in this directory.
Options +FollowSymLinks

# Make Drupal handle any 404 errors.
ErrorDocument 404 /index.php

# Force simple error message for requests for non-existent favicon.ico.
<Files favicon.ico>
  # There is no end quote below, for compatibility with Apache 1.3.
  ErrorDocument 404 "The requested file favicon.ico was not found.
</Files>

# Set the default handler.
DirectoryIndex index.php

# Override PHP settings. More in sites/default/settings.php
# but the following cannot be changed at runtime.

# PHP 4, Apache 1.
<IfModule mod_php4.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
</IfModule>

# PHP 4, Apache 2.
<IfModule sapi_apache2.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
</IfModule>

# PHP 5, Apache 1 and 2.
<IfModule mod_php5.c>
  php_value magic_quotes_gpc                0
  php_value register_globals                0
  php_value session.auto_start              0
  php_value mbstring.http_input             pass
  php_value mbstring.http_output            pass
  php_value mbstring.encoding_translation   0
</IfModule>

# Requires mod_expires to be enabled.
<IfModule mod_expires.c>
  # Enable expirations.
  ExpiresActive On

  # Cache all files for 2 weeks after access (A).
  ExpiresDefault A1209600

  <FilesMatch \.php$>
    # Do not allow PHP scripts to be cached unless they explicitly send cache
    # headers themselves. Otherwise all scripts would have to overwrite the
    # headers set by mod_expires if they want another caching behavior. This may
    # fail if an error occurs early in the bootstrap process, and it may cause
    # problems if a non-Drupal PHP file is installed in a subdirectory.
    ExpiresActive Off
  </FilesMatch>
</IfModule>

# Various rewrite rules.
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
  RewriteEngine on

  # If your site can be accessed both with and without the 'www.' prefix, you
  # can use one of the following settings to redirect users to your preferred
  # URL, either WITH or WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix. Choose ONLY one option:
  #
  # To redirect all users to access the site WITH the 'www.' prefix,
  # (http://example.com/... will be redirected to http://www.example.com/...)
  # adapt and uncomment the following:
  # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^example\.com$ [NC]
  # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 [L,R=301]
  #
  # To redirect all users to access the site WITHOUT the 'www.' prefix,
  # (http://www.example.com/... will be redirected to http://example.com/...)
  # uncomment and adapt the following:
  # RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www\.example\.com$ [NC]
  # RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://example.com/$1 [L,R=301]

  # Modify the RewriteBase if you are using Drupal in a subdirectory or in a
  # VirtualDocumentRoot and the rewrite rules are not working properly.
  # For example if your site is at http://example.com/drupal uncomment and
  # modify the following line:
  # RewriteBase /drupal
  #
  # If your site is running in a VirtualDocumentRoot at http://example.com/,
  # uncomment the following line:
  # RewriteBase /

  # Added by Wil Black Oct. 7, 2010
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} "/myproject/"
  RewriteRule (.*) $1 [L]

  # Rewrite URLs of the form 'x' to the form 'index.php?q=x'.
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/favicon.ico
  RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php?q=$1 [L,QSA]
</IfModule>

# $Id: .htaccess,v 1.90.2.4 2009/12/07 12:00:40 goba Exp $


  [1]: http://how.4cpus.com/installing-django-on-mt-media-temple-dv-35-server-with-mod_python/

Answer 1

The problem is probably that drupal grabs URL's that are in the form domain/path1/path2 and converts them to domain?q=path1/path2, and thus is probably grabbing everything that is trying to get to Django, and turning it into a drupal call. So my guess is that what you need to do is add a new rewrite condition to drupal's htaccess telling it to ignore anything targeted at the Django subdirectory. I haven't done this before, but I would guess you want something like this:

  RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !=/Django_subdirectory

This should go along with all of the other rewrite conditions in that file.