Has anyone ever successfully configured Django channels in AWS Beanstalk environments? Is it possible?

Question

Has anyone ever successfully configured Django channels in AWS Beanstalk environments? Is it possible?

111 views Asked by Fernando De Palma Madrid At 18 January 2024 at 17:36

Problem Description: I am attempting to create a websocket through a web application in an AWS environment (Beanstalk). The components involved are: Django Channels, Daphne, and Redis (Redis ElastiCache). We are using POSTMAN as a client (although we also use Python scripts), and this is our URL: wss://api.?????.com/ws/tunnel/group_test/.

The client can connect to the socket without any issues and receives the welcome message. This is the consumer handler responsible for it:

class ChatConsumer(AsyncWebsocketConsumer):
async def connect(self):
    try:
        self.room_name = self.scope['url_route']['kwargs']['comm_name']
        self.room_group_name = f'chat_{self.room_name}'
        # Unirse a un grupo de chat
        await self.channel_layer.group_add(
            self.room_group_name,
            self.channel_name
        )
        await self.accept()
        welcome_message_1 = f'Bienvenido al WebSocket 1. Tu canal es {self.channel_name}'
        await self.chat_message({'message': welcome_message_1})

As we mentioned, the client successfully connects, but when sending a message to an existing group (otherwise, it does not produce an error, which in itself is a clue), we receive the following error message from Daphne:

2024-01-16 03:46:40,053 No-IP daphne.server ERROR Exception inside application: unpack(b) received extra data. Traceback (most recent call last):

(full log below)

This is the consumer handler:

    async def receive(self, text_data):
    try:
        text_data_json = json.loads(text_data)
        message = text_data_json['message']
       
        # Enviar mensaje al grupo de chat
        await self.channel_layer.group_send(
            self.room_group_name,
            {
                "type": "chat_message",
                "message": message
            }
        )

The log error occurs during the await.

Initially, I thought there was a problem with the data I was sending to the operation, and that's why unpack(b) was not performing its job well (in fact, I created a thread that I will have to close regarding this). But now I understand that while this could be a first error, the problem might come upstream, perhaps in the way Redis and Django communicate. I haven't been able to find information in the Django release notes about this.

We work with AWS Redis ElastiCache, which should be well configured, as the connection takes place and the client correctly receives the welcome message. (in addition to the typical write/read variable checks). However, it is possible that in a more complex operation (message broadcasting), they don't communicate well with Daphne…or Django-channels, and this is where I get a bit lost as I don't know the exact way they communicate with each other. The LOG does not provide further information.