Backend

The backend is a Django application, the repository can be found at:

https://github.com/wger-project/wger

Tip

The easiest way to get a backend running is via the Docker dev environment, see Backend dev with Docker. The instructions below cover a native install on your machine.

Local installation

Install npm, sass and, optionally, uv

Download the source code:

git clone https://github.com/wger-project/wger.git server
cd server

If using uv:

uv sync
uv pip install -e .
source .venv/bin/activate

Otherwise, manually create a new virtualenv and install everything:

python3 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install --upgrade pip
pip install --group dev .
pip install -e .

This will download the required JS and CSS libraries and create an SQLite database and populate it with data on the first run:

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings.local_dev
wger bootstrap
wger load-online-fixtures

It’s recommended to make a backup of the SQLite database after the initial bootstrap, just copy it to some other place:

cp database.sqlite database.sqlite.orig

You can of course also use other databases such as PostgreSQL or MariaDB. Create a database and user with the usual tools (createdb, CREATE USER, etc.) and point Django at it via the DJANGO_DB_* env vars (see Settings) before calling bootstrap.

Compile the translation files:

cd wger
django-admin compilemessages

After all this you can just use Django’s development server:

$ python manage.py runserver

That’s it. You can log in with the default administrator user:

  • username: admin

  • password: adminadmin

You can reset the admin’s password with wger create-or-reset-admin.

Running the tests

The backend uses Django’s built-in test runner. Each app keeps its tests under wger/<app>/tests/. To run the tests:

# Full text suite
python manage.py test

# In multi core machines
python manage.py test --parallel auto

# Only some tests
python manage.py test wger.exercises
python manage.py test wger.exercises.tests.test_categories

Code style

The project uses ruff for formatting and isort for import sorting, both configured in pyproject.toml. Before opening a PR:

ruff format
isort .

CI runs the same checks, so it’s worth doing it locally first.

Next steps

  • For a description of the available settings consult Settings.

  • You might need to start Celery as well if you want to run certain commands in the background.

  • For managing i18n files consult Internationalization (i18n).

  • Check the Dummy data for generating dummy data.

  • Take a look at django extensions, a collection of custom extensions and commands:

    https://django-extensions.readthedocs.io/

    E.g. you can use runserver_plus instead of the default Django server as you can use an interactive debugger directly from the browser if an exception occurs. It also accepts the same command-line options. For this just install the following packages:

    pip install django_extensions werkzeug
python manage.py runserver_plus [options]