how to modularize django settings.py?

Question

When you install a new django application, you have to add/modify your settings.py module.

For a project I'm trying to make that module a python subpackage and create a module for each application:

settings\
    __init__.py
    base.py
    admin.py
    feincms.py
    ...

The problem I'm confronted with is how to merge settings.py attributes (INSTALLED_APPS for example is a tuple of values) that are getting values in the different submodules?

Thanks

Ok, I asked the wrong question (got the right answer for it though). My question should have been, how to get attributes from all submodules and merge them? Django will import settings and expects everything to be there.

I created code.djangoproject.com/wiki/… as my preferred solution. Allows for inheritance from a common file in any deployment environment. — Karim Nassar
– Karim Nassar, Commented Sep 16, 2011 at 6:02

S.Lott · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-10 01:53:55Z

8

"When you install a new django application, you have to add/modify your settings.py module."

I think this is fine as is.

I don't see any reason to change or modify this at all.

What we do, however, is to "subclass" the core settings module.

Our developer-specific and installation-specific files have names like settings_devxy_linux2 and settings_checkout_win32, etc.

Each of these files starts with from settings import * to import the core settings and extend those core settings with overrides for a specific installation and platform.

It doesn't require any real work. It does, however, mean that we do most things with django-admin.py because our settings aren't called settings.

answered Jan 10, 2010 at 1:53

S.Lott

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4 Comments

Peter Rowell Over a year ago

So, are these the files you specify in DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE in the environment? We went sort of the opposite direction: we have settings.py but it does a try/include of local_early_setting.py and of local_late_settings.py. These files differ from development to staging. The basic settings.py contains the correct production values.

S.Lott Over a year ago

We specify settings_prod_linux2 for production; it imports the core settings that define the project as a whole. I use settings_devsl_win32 for development; it imports the core settings. Since it's simple overrides, there's no "logic". No "if", no "try".

Peter Rowell Over a year ago

Good point. We had to explicitly exclude our local*settings files from Mercurial so they didn't accidentally end up in production. Thanx for the idea.

akaihola Over a year ago

Peter's plan suffers from the problem of the original question: imported modules can't easily e.g. add items to INSTALLED_APPS.

Trenton McKinney · Accepted Answer · 2024-03-29 19:34:40Z

7

You might be interested in this solution; uses execfile() to load a series of settings files in order, where each file has full access to settings from previously-loaded files, to update, modify, etc.

$ ls settings/

10-base.conf
20-engines.conf
30-site.conf
...

$ cat settings.py

import os.path
import glob
conffiles = glob.glob(os.path.join(os.path.dirname(__file__), 'settings', '*.conf'))
conffiles.sort()
for f in conffiles:
    execfile(os.path.abspath(f))

edited Mar 29, 2024 at 19:34

Trenton McKinney

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answered Jan 10, 2010 at 5:43

Carl Meyer

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3 Comments

victor n. Over a year ago

yes, i ended up writing a solution similar to that. but execfile() is now discouraged. so i used exec() and compile()

akaihola Over a year ago

victor, it would be interesting to see the code for your solution

victor n. Over a year ago

so sorry guys. that was like 3 years ago and i don't remember the app i was working on. but this answer might help: stackoverflow.com/a/437857/125560. also be sure to be up to date with these things. i am seeing that there are a few other alternatives for Python3

akaihola · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-18 14:58:11Z

6

I've used this work-around:

settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = ('whatever',)
import more_settings
more_settings.modify(globals())

more_settings.py:

def modify(settings):
    settings['INSTALLED_APPS'] += ('another_app',)

edited Jan 18, 2010 at 14:58

answered Jan 18, 2010 at 14:53

akaihola

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1 Comment

iElectric Over a year ago

This is probably the best way to handle single-inheritance. Next step would be YAML.

dArignac · Accepted Answer · 2011-07-03 08:47:07Z

2

I have the same structure of settings files and I do the following to import the settings of the submodules:

def load_settings_file(file):
    file = open(os.path.join(INSTALL_DIR, '<projectname>', 'settings', file + '.py'))
    content = file.read()
    file.close()
    return content

for submodule in ['base', 'admin', 'feincms']:
    exec(load_settings_file(submodule))

answered Jul 3, 2011 at 8:47

dArignac

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Comments

akaihola · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-18 15:17:59Z

1

If you prefer more magic than in my previous more_settings.modify() approach, try this:

settings.py:

INSTALLED_APPS = ('whatever',)
import more_settings
more_settings.modify(globals())

more_settings.py:

def config(INSTALLED_APPS=(), **other_settings):
    INSTALLED_APPS += ('another_app',)
    del other_settings
    return locals()

def modify(settings):
    settings.update(config(**settings))

Pros: no need to refer to settings with dict notation

Cons: must define modified settings as kwargs for config()

edited Jan 18, 2010 at 15:17

answered Jan 18, 2010 at 14:56

akaihola

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Comments

Alex Martelli · Accepted Answer · 2010-01-10 01:44:19Z

Presumably the best way to "merge" varies, attributes by attributes. For example, given several tuples (from the INSTALLED_APPS of various submodules), you might simply concatenate them into a new tuple (for the INSTALLED_APPS attribute of the package as a whole), or, if possible duplications are a problem, so something smarter to remove the duplications (in this case you may not care about ordering, so simply tuple(set(tup1+tup2+tup3)) might suffice).

For other cases ("merging" dictionaries, "merging" settings which are just scalars or strings, etc) you'll need different strategies (maybe successive .update calls for the dictionaries, pick just one according to some criteria for the scalars or strings, etc, etc) -- I just don't see a "one size fits all" approach working here.

mo. · Accepted Answer · 2010-06-25 17:11:37Z

-1

just put

from base import *
from admin import *
...

in ur init.py that should work

i used it for different sites

base/settings.py # common settings: db, apps, ...
base/sites/website1/settings.py # site_id, custom middleware 
base/sites/website2/settings.py # site_id, custom middleware

the website settings import the common settings with

from base.settings import *

and define custom attribtues

edited Jun 25, 2010 at 17:11

answered Jun 25, 2010 at 17:06

mo.

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