Best way to config gunicorn and nginx with django?

Question

I am trying to deploy django with gunicorn and nginx on heroku, and i'm kinda confused with the way to config gunicorn and nginx, when i searched through internet, they usually create gunicorn.socket

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn socket

[Socket]
ListenStream=/run/gunicorn.sock

[Install]
WantedBy=sockets.target

and gunicorn.service

[Unit]
Description=gunicorn daemon
Requires=gunicorn.socket
After=network.target

[Service]
User=sammy
Group=www-data
WorkingDirectory=/home/sammy/myprojectdir
ExecStart=/home/sammy/myprojectdir/myprojectenv/bin/gunicorn \
          --access-logfile - \
          --workers 3 \
          --bind unix:/run/gunicorn.sock \
          myproject.wsgi:application

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

and the nginx configure file in /etc/nginc/site-enabled/

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name server_domain_or_IP;

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location /static/ {
        root /home/administrator/Documents/Dashboard/dashboardBackend;
    }

    location / {
        include proxy_params;
        proxy_pass http://unix:/run/gunicorn.sock;
    }
}

but when i go to gunicorn docs : https://docs.gunicorn.org/en/stable/deploy.html. nginx has a config file like this

worker_processes 1;

user nobody nogroup;
# 'user nobody nobody;' for systems with 'nobody' as a group instead
error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
  worker_connections 1024; # increase if you have lots of clients
  accept_mutex off; # set to 'on' if nginx worker_processes > 1
  # 'use epoll;' to enable for Linux 2.6+
  # 'use kqueue;' to enable for FreeBSD, OSX
}

http {
  include mime.types;
  # fallback in case we can't determine a type
  default_type application/octet-stream;
  access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log combined;
  sendfile on;

  upstream app_server {
    # fail_timeout=0 means we always retry an upstream even if it failed
    # to return a good HTTP response

    # for UNIX domain socket setups
    server unix:/tmp/gunicorn.sock fail_timeout=0;

    # for a TCP configuration
    # server 192.168.0.7:8000 fail_timeout=0;
  }

  server {
    # if no Host match, close the connection to prevent host spoofing
    listen 80 default_server;
    return 444;
  }

  server {
    # use 'listen 80 deferred;' for Linux
    # use 'listen 80 accept_filter=httpready;' for FreeBSD
    listen 80;
    client_max_body_size 4G;

    # set the correct host(s) for your site
    server_name example.com www.example.com;

    keepalive_timeout 5;

    # path for static files
    root /path/to/app/current/public;

    location / {
      # checks for static file, if not found proxy to app
      try_files $uri @proxy_to_app;
    }

    location @proxy_to_app {
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
      proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
      # we don't want nginx trying to do something clever with
      # redirects, we set the Host: header above already.
      proxy_redirect off;
      proxy_pass http://app_server;
    }

    error_page 500 502 503 504 /500.html;
    location = /500.html {
      root /path/to/app/current/public;
    }
  }
}

So i wonder what the different between these and which is the best way to setup gunicorn, nginx. Thanks

Answer 1

Did you possibly assume these were separate approaches? Its a configuration for Nginx, instructing it to connect to the /tmp/gunicorn.sock socket, and configuration for systemd, instructing it to setup gunicorn on that same /tmp/gunicorn.sock socket.

They work on conjunction, one sets up a socket to host the application, one sets up the http server to allow public access to that application, via that socket.