How to use Gulp Browsersync with Django?

Question

First time using Gulp and I'm following a couple of tutorials that don't seem to be working quite right for me. I have a real basic project and I just want to learn how to use Gulp for standard things like JavaScript/CSS minification, image reduction, and browser sync.

When I run my watch task with Browsersync, it goes to the right URL of localhost:8000, but it shows Cannot GET / instead of rendering my page. How do I fix this so I can use Browsersync with Django?

File directory:

gulpfile.js:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var sass = require('gulp-sass');
var browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();

gulp.task('sass', function() {
  return gulp.src('polls/static/polls/scss/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('polls/static/polls/css'))
    .pipe(browserSync.reload({
      stream: true
    }))
});

gulp.task('browserSync', function() {
  browserSync.init({
    server: "mysite",
    port: 8000
  });
});

gulp.task('watch', ['browserSync', 'sass'], function() {
  gulp.watch('polls/static/polls/scss/**/*.scss', ['sass']);
})

Answer 1

Just had to make another task called runserver which runs in the cmd python manage.py runserver. Put the task as one of the dependencies for Browsersync, set the proxy and port, and I was set to go.

var exec = require('child_process').exec didn't require any extra npm install. I think it's automatically built in.

var gulp = require('gulp');
var sass = require('gulp-sass');
var browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();
var exec = require('child_process').exec;

gulp.task('sass', function() {
  return gulp.src('polls/static/polls/scss/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('polls/static/polls/css'))
    .pipe(browserSync.reload({
      stream: true
    }))
});

gulp.task('runserver', function() {
  var proc = exec('python manage.py runserver')
})

gulp.task('browserSync', ['runserver'], function() {
  browserSync.init({
    notify: false,
    port: 8000,
    proxy: 'localhost:8000'
  })
});

gulp.task('watch', ['browserSync', 'sass'], function() {
  gulp.watch('polls/static/polls/scss/**/*.scss', ['sass']);
  gulp.watch('polls/static/polls/scripts/**/*.js', browserSync.reload);
  gulp.watch('polls/templates/**/*.html', browserSync.reload);
})

Answer 2

gulp.task('browserSync', ['runserver'], function() {
  browserSync.init({
    notify: false,
    proxy: 'localhost:8000'
  })
});