Fix: Modernize for Python 3.12, Django 4.2+, and PostgreSQL 15+ Compatibility

[krupal-t2b]

Overview

This PR updates the backend to support modern deployment environments (Python 3.12, Django 4.2+, and PostgreSQL 15+). The current master branch relies on Django 2.2 and outdated dependencies that completely fail to build or run on newer Ubuntu/Linux distributions.

Key Issues Resolved

1. Python 3.12 distutils Missing Error

• Issue: Python 3.12 removed the standard distutils library, causing the initial manage.py commands to crash.
• Fix: Added setuptools to requirements.txt to restore compatibility.

2. Gunicorn 502 Bad Gateway (jsonfield deprecation)

• Issue: The external jsonfield package tries to import ugettext_lazy and force_text, both of which were removed in Django 4.0+. This causes Gunicorn workers to silently fail on boot.
• Fix: Removed the jsonfield dependency entirely and swapped model/models.py to use Django's native django.db.models.JSONField.

3. PostgreSQL 16 Timezone AssertionError

• Issue: Modern PostgreSQL drivers strictly enforce timezone awareness. Retrieving a saved chart throws AssertionError: database connection isn't set to UTC.
• Fix: Added 'OPTIONS': {'options': '-c timezone=UTC'} to the DATABASES configuration in settings.py to force the connection to UTC.

4. Django 4.0 URL Routing Crash

• Issue: django.conf.urls.url was removed in Django 4.0, causing 500 errors on API endpoints.
• Fix: Updated all urls.py imports to use the modern equivalent: from django.urls import re_path as url.

5. Database Driver Build Failures

• Issue: psycopg2 fails to compile on modern Linux kernels without local C-compilers.
• Fix: Swapped requirements.txt to use psycopg2-binary for pre-compiled wheel support.

Testing

Successfully tested saving, loading, and listing charts on an Ubuntu 24.04 LTS instance running Python 3.12 and PostgreSQL 16 via Gunicorn and Nginx.

[Copilot]

Copilot encountered an error and was unable to review this pull request. You can try again by re-requesting a review.

[Copilot]

Pull request overview

Copilot reviewed 4 out of 5 changed files in this pull request and generated 3 comments.