When working with a settings directory, where should I import it?

Question

I have recently started working with a settings directory as described in the Two Scoops of Django book. It contains the following files

• local.py
• staging.py
• production.py
• test.py
• __init__.py

To be able to use the different setting files on the server I have adapted my django.fcgi script to import the settings module. It works very smoothly.

How do I do the same on my local machine on which I use runserver, however? I have set the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE and I have adapted the manage.py file to

#!/usr/bin/env python
from django.core.management import execute_manager
import imp

import sys
sys.path.insert(0, '/home/user/don.joey/projects/a_project/a_project_site/settings')

import settings

try:
    imp.find_module('settings') # Assumed to be in the same directory.
except ImportError:
    import sys
    sys.stderr.write("Error: Can't find the file 'settings.py' in the directory containing %r. It appears you've customized things.\nYou'll have to run django-admin.py, passing it your settings module.\n" % __file__)
    sys.exit(1)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    execute_manager(settings)

It works fine.

How can I make django-admin.py find these settings? I do not want to manually edit django-admin.py because it is part of my virtualenv and it will does thus regularly be updated.

Update

I have set the following: export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=settings.local.

Answer 1

You need to set two things

• DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE and
• PYTHONPATH so that the settings module can be found

The way Two Scoops of Django suggests setting up a project named blah you would have the following directory structure:

- blah_project/
    - blah/
        - manage.py
        - blah/
            - ...
            - settings/
                 - __init__.py
                 - local.py
                 - production.py
                 - ...

Run the following (assuming a bash environment):

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=blah.settings.local
export PYTHONPATH=/full/path/to/blah_project/blah

As long as django-admin.py is on your path (and it should be if django is installed and activated within your venv), you should be able to run:

django-admin.py runserver