dj-lite 0.1.0

Configure SQLite for production use with Django.

dj-lite

Use SQLite in production with Django

Overview

Simplify deploying and maintaining production Django websites by using SQLite in production. dj-lite helps enable the best performance for SQLite for small to medium-sized projects. It requires Django 5.1+.

Installation

1. Install dj-lite with pip, uv, etc.

pip install dj-lite

OR

uv add dj-lite

2. In settings.py add the following.

# settings.py

import dj_lite import sqlite_config

DATABASES = {
  "default": sqlite_config(BASE_DIR),
}

3. That's it! You're all set to go.

What is even happening here

The Django defaults for SQLite are not great for production use. dj-lite tunes SQLite so it can be safely used in production.

Init Command

When SQLite opens a database connection, settings (called pragmas) can be passed in to tune the performance. dj-lite comes with highly tuned defaults for these pragmas.

PRAGMA journal_mode=WAL;
PRAGMA synchronous=NORMAL;
PRAGMA mmap_size=134217728;
PRAGMA journal_size_limit=27103364;
PRAGMA cache_size=2000;

Transaction Mode

According to the Django documentation, SQLite supports three transaction modes: DEFERRED, IMMEDIATE, and EXCLUSIVE. However, the default is DEFERRED. However, "[to] make sure your transactions wait until timeout before raising “Database is Locked”, change the transaction mode to IMMEDIATE."

In my experience, using IMMEDIATE has been ok as long as database queries are short.

Note: django-tasks requires a transaction mode of EXCLUSIVE for locking purposes.

Inspiration

• https://github.com/oldmoe/litestack
• https://blog.pecar.me/django-sqlite-dblock
• https://blog.pecar.me/sqlite-prod
• https://blog.pecar.me/sqlite-django-config

Developing

Run the tests

1. uv pip install -e .
2. uv run pytest