Django SSL Server

Django SSL Server is a SSL-enabled development server for the Django Framework.

Please note that this should not be used for production setups. This app is intended for special use-cases. Most people should instead do a proper production deployment where a real webserver such as Apache or NGINX handles SSL.

Getting Started

Install the module in your Python distribution or virtualenv:

$ pip install django-sslserver

Add the application to your INSTALLED_APPS:

INSTALLED_APPS = (...
"sslserver",
...
)

Start a SSL-enabled debug server:

$ python manage.py runsslserver

and access app on https://localhost:8000 or start server on specified port:

$ python manage.py runsslserver 127.0.0.1:9000

IPv6 support:

$ python manage.py runsslserver -6 [::]:7443

You'll now be able to access your Django app on https://localhost:9000/

Browser Certificate Errors

Using the default settings, your local browser will make all sorts of noise that it doesn't trust the certificate. This is expected.

Django SSL Server ships "batteries included" with a self-signed server certificate. With self-signed certificates, the server is effectively telling the user, "I'm such-and-such server, because I said so". Whereas, with a commercial SSL certificate, the server tells the user, "I'm Bank of America, because VeriSign said so (or any other commercial certificate authority)."

There are two options for making the certificate warning go away in development:

Option 1: Tell your browser to explicitly trust the certificate. You can do this in your browser's "advanced settings" tab, by installing sslserver/certs/development.crt as a trusted certificate. The mechanism for this varies from browser to browser.

Option 2: Use a certificate from a CA that your browser trusts, for example Letsencrypt. If you have a certificate/key pair from a certificate authority, you can tell Django SSL Server to use it with the following arguments:

$ python manage.py runsslserver --certificate /path/to/certificate.crt --key /path/to/key.key

Third-Party Static File Handlers

If you're using a wrapper around your WSGI application such as dj_static or WhiteNoise, you probably want to let it handle serving static files. Otherwise, you may see 404s when requesting static files. You can disable the default behavior by using the --nostatic option.