Running Gunicorn¶

You can run Gunicorn by using commands or integrate with Django or Paster. For deploying Gunicorn in production see Deploying Gunicorn.

Commands¶

After installing Gunicorn you will have access to the command line script gunicorn.

gunicorn¶

Basic usage:

$ gunicorn [OPTIONS] APP_MODULE

Where APP_MODULE is of the pattern $(MODULE_NAME):$(VARIABLE_NAME). The module name can be a full dotted path. The variable name refers to a WSGI callable that should be found in the specified module.

Example with the test app:

def app(environ, start_response):
    """Simplest possible application object"""
    data = b'Hello, World!\n'
    status = '200 OK'
    response_headers = [
        ('Content-type', 'text/plain'),
        ('Content-Length', str(len(data)))
    ]
    start_response(status, response_headers)
    return iter([data])

You can now run the app with the following command:

$ gunicorn --workers=2 test:app

Commonly Used Arguments¶

-c CONFIG, --config=CONFIG - Specify a config file in the form $(PATH), file:$(PATH), or python:$(MODULE_NAME).
-b BIND, --bind=BIND - Specify a server socket to bind. Server sockets can be any of $(HOST), $(HOST):$(PORT), or unix:$(PATH). An IP is a valid $(HOST).
-w WORKERS, --workers=WORKERS - The number of worker processes. This number should generally be between 2-4 workers per core in the server. Check the FAQ for ideas on tuning this parameter.
-k WORKERCLASS, --worker-class=WORKERCLASS - The type of worker process to run. You’ll definitely want to read the production page for the implications of this parameter. You can set this to $(NAME) where $(NAME) is one of sync, eventlet, gevent, tornado, gthread, gaiohttp (deprecated). sync is the default. See the worker_class documentation for more information.
-n APP_NAME, --name=APP_NAME - If setproctitle is installed you can adjust the name of Gunicorn process as they appear in the process system table (which affects tools like ps and top).

Settings can be specified by using environment variable GUNICORN_CMD_ARGS.

See Configuration Overview and Settings for detailed usage.

Integration¶

We also provide integration for both Django and Paster applications.

Django¶

Gunicorn will look for a WSGI callable named application if not specified. So for a typical Django project, invoking Gunicorn would look like:

$ gunicorn myproject.wsgi

Note

This requires that your project be on the Python path; the simplest way to ensure that is to run this command from the same directory as your manage.py file.

You can use the –env option to set the path to load the settings. In case you need it you can also add your application path to PYTHONPATH using the –pythonpath option:

$ gunicorn --env DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings myproject.wsgi

Paste¶

If you are a user/developer of a paste-compatible framework/app (as Pyramid, Pylons and Turbogears) you can use the –paste option to run your application.

For example:

$ gunicorn --paste development.ini -b :8080 --chdir /path/to/project

Or use a different application:

$ gunicorn --paste development.ini#admin -b :8080 --chdir /path/to/project

It is all here. No configuration files nor additional Python modules to write!