I knew that for deploying a Django application we have to use a combination of uWSGI + Nginx or Nginx + Gunicorn server. Is that necessary? I have a small doubt here. Can we deploy the entire application only in Nginx or only in Gunicorn? Will, it not work? Just for an example(leaving production) can't I do that?
Deploying a Django application using just Nginx or Gunicorn is not technically possible. Here's why:
Nginx: Nginx is great at efficiently serving static content and functioning as a reverse proxy. It can handle HTTP requests and route them to backend servers such as Gunicorn or uWSGI. However, Nginx lacks the ability to directly execute Python code. Therefore, deploying a Django application solely with Nginx is not feasible.
Gunicorn: Gunicorn (Green Unicorn) is a Python WSGI HTTP server used for running Python web applications. It is commonly paired with Nginx as a WSGI server for Django apps. But Gunicorn is not a standalone web server like Nginx; it is meant to be used with api. It's designed to work with application frameworks like Django and needs a web server (like Nginx or Apache) to handle incoming requests and act as a reverse proxy.
In a typical deployment setup, Nginx is used as a reverse proxy to handle incoming HTTP requests, while Gunicorn (or uWSGI) serves as the WSGI server to execute the Django application code. This setup provides benefits such as load balancing, static file serving, and improved security.