MariaDB: Using MariaDB with Django

This documentation is part of the Getting started guide. View the full guide here: How to get started with MariaDB.

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If you have not already, you can install the mysqlclient module to connect Django to MariaDB:

pip install mysqlclient

If you get the error Exception: Can not find valid pkg-config name while installing, you may need to install the libmysqlclient package first. For Ubuntu/Debian:

apt-get update && apt-get install --no-install-recommends -y libmysqlclient-dev

To test your connection, you might start by putting your credentials directly into settings.py. This is fine for testing, but it is not secure for a production environment.

DATABASES = {
  'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
    'HOST': '<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com',
    'PORT': '<PORT>',
    'OPTIONS': {
      'ssl_mode': 'REQUIRED',
    },
    'NAME': 'root',
    'USER': 'root',
    'PASSWORD': '<ROOT_PASSWORD>'
  }
}

Please note: This example is only for testing. You should not use hardcoded credentials in production.

Once you confirm the connection works, it is safer to store credentials in environment variables. If you use django-environ, you can install it like this:

pip install django-environ

Then update settings.py:

import environ
env = environ.Env()
environ.Env.read_env()

DATABASES = {
  'default': {
    'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.mysql',
    'HOST': env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST'),
    'PORT': env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_PORT'),
    'OPTIONS': {
      'ssl_mode': 'REQUIRED',
    },
    'NAME': 'root',
    'USER': 'root',
    'PASSWORD': env('STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD')
  }
}

Then, create or update the .env file (in the same directory as settings.py) with:

STACKHERO_MARIADB_HOST=<XXXXXX>.stackhero-network.com
STACKHERO_MARIADB_PORT=<PORT>
STACKHERO_MARIADB_ROOT_PASSWORD=<ROOT_PASSWORD>

Finally, to keep your credentials safe, add .env to your .gitignore:

echo ".env" >> .gitignore