Django ALLOWED_HOSTS for Amazon ELB

Question

I\'m using Django and I have the ALLOWED_HOSTS setting to include my EC2\'s private IP as per below:

import requests
EC2_PRIVATE_IP = N         


        

Answer 1

Another simple solution would be to write a custom MIDDLEWARE which will give the response to ELB before the ALLOWED_HOSTS is checked. So now you don't have to load ALLOWED_HOSTS dynamically.

The middleware can be as simple as:

project/app/middleware.py

from django.http import HttpResponse
from django.utils.deprecation import MiddlewareMixin

class HealthCheckMiddleware(MiddlewareMixin):
    def process_request(self, request):
        if request.META["PATH_INFO"] == "/ping/":
            return HttpResponse("pong")

settings.py

MIDDLEWARE = [
    'corsheaders.middleware.CorsMiddleware',
    'app.middleware.HealthCheckMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.security.SecurityMiddleware',
    'django.contrib.sessions.middleware.SessionMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware',
    'django.middleware.csrf.CsrfViewMiddleware',
    ...
]

Django Middleware reference https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/http/middleware/