Getting Started

`djaodjin-saas<https://github.com/djaodjin-saas/>`_ is a Django app that implements the logic to support subscription-based Software-as-a-Service businesses.

As such you will need to be familiar with Django Apps and Django Projects (see `Getting started with Django<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/intro/>`_).

If you are looking to see the features djaodjin-saas brings to your Django project without going through the setup inside your own Django project, run the testsite committed alongside the application code (see steps in `README.md<https://github.com/djaodjin/djaodjin-saas/blob/master/README.md>`_).

If you are interested in what a fully-integrated SaaS Django project could look like, browse the `djaoapp<https://github.com/djaodjin/djaoapp/>`_ code repository and/or the `djaoapp livedemo<https://livedemo.djaoapp.com/>`_ (Warning: the livedemo is for the djaoapp, fully-integrated SaaS Django project. There is quite some work to integrate an auth app, a rule-based access control app as well as HTML/CSS required to make all of it acceptable to modern UI standards).

Installation and configuration

We assume here you already created a Python virtual environment<https://docs.python.org/3/library/venv.html>, installed Django and created a Django project which will be using the `djaodjin-saas<https://github.com/djaodjin-saas/>`_ Django App.

First download and install the latest version of djaodjin-saas into your Python virtual environment.

$ pip install djaodjin-saas

Edit your project urls.py to add the djaojdin-saas urls

urlpatterns += [
    url(r'^', include('saas.urls')),
]

Edit your project settings.py to add saas into the INSTALLED_APPS and a SAAS configuration block

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'saas'
)

SAAS = {
    'PROCESSOR': {
        'BACKEND': 'saas.backends.stripe_processor.StripeBackend',
        'PRIV_KEY': "_Your_Stripe_Private_Key_",
        'PUB_KEY': "_Your_Stripe_Public_Key_",
    }
}

Various payment processor backends are available.

The latest versions of django-restframework implement paginators disconnected from parameters in views (i.e. no more paginate_by). You will thus need to define PAGE_SIZE in your settings.py

REST_FRAMEWORK = {
    'PAGE_SIZE': 25,
    'DEFAULT_PAGINATION_CLASS':
        'rest_framework.pagination.PageNumberPagination',
}

There is no access policies by default on the djaodjin-saas URLs. It is thus your responsability to add the appropriate decorators to restrict which users can access which URL. A set of common decorators in Software-as-a-Service setups is provided as part of the Flexible Security Framework.

Setting up a Software-as-a-Service site

To setup a site with three plans (basic, premium and ultimate), we will create an Organization for the payment processor and an Organization for the provider / broker together with three Plan that belong to the provider (see database schema). We will also need to create an default Agreement for the terms of use of the site.

Following is a fixtures file doing just that (ref: `How to load fixtures in a Django project<https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/4.2/topics/db/fixtures/>`_)

Example fixtures:

[{
    "fields": {
      "slug": "stripe",
      "full_name": "Stripe",
      "created_at": "2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00",
      "processor": 1,
      "is_active": 1
    },
    "model": "saas.Organization", "pk": 1
},
{
    "fields": {
      "slug": "terms-of-use",
      "title": "Terms Of Use",
      "modified": "2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00"
    },
    "model": "saas.agreement", "pk": 1
},
{
    "fields": {
      "slug": "cowork",
      "full_name": "ABC Corp.",
      "created_at": "2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00",
      "email": "support@localhost.localdomain",
      "phone": "555-555-5555",
      "street_address": "1 ABC loop",
      "locality":  "San Francisco",
      "region": "CA",
      "postal_code": "94102",
      "country": "US",
      "processor": 1,
      "is_provider": 1,
      "is_active": 1
    },
    "model": "saas.Organization", "pk": 2
},
{
  "fields": {
    "slug": "basic",
    "title": "Basic",
    "created_at": "2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00",
    "setup_amount": 0,
    "period_amount": 2000,
    "period_type": 4,
    "description": "Basic Plan",
    "organization" : 2,
    "is_active": 1
  },
  "model" : "saas.Plan", "pk": 1
},
{
  "fields": {
    "slug": "premium",
    "title": "Premium",
    "created_at":"2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00",
    "setup_amount": 0,
    "period_amount": 6900,
    "period_type": 4,
    "description": "Premium Plan",
    "organization" : 2,
    "is_active": 1
  },
  "model" : "saas.Plan", "pk": 2
},
{
  "fields": {
    "slug": "ultimate",
    "title": "Ultimate",
    "created_at": "2016-01-01T00:00:00-09:00",
    "setup_amount": 0,
    "period_amount": 8900,
    "period_type": 4,
    "description": "Ultimate Plan",
    "organization" : 2,
    "is_active": 1
  },
  "model" : "saas.Plan", "pk": 3
}]

To setup different pricing models such as a 3 Part Tariff (3PT), read about the supported pricing models.

Selling add-ons plans

Subscribers can be subscribed to any number of Plan. The checkout pipeline support orders for multiple plans in one payment. All you have to do is thus:

1. Create a new Plan

2. Modify the pricing page from a one-click to a shopping cart experience

Restricting features based on a plan

In decorators.py there is a requires_paid_subscription decorator which is part of the Flexible Security Framework.

What you would do to allow/deny access to certain features (i.e. URLs) based on the subscribed-to Plan is to decorate the view implementing the feature.

Example:

urls.py:

from saas.decorators import requires_paid_subscription
from .views import FeatureView

urlpatterns = [
\.\.\.
    url(r'^(?P<organization>[a-z])/(?P<subscribed_plan>[a-z])/feature/',
        requires_paid_subscription(FeatureView.as_view()), name='feature'),
 \.\.\.
]