Django project - can not sync data tables - syncdb (error: no module named XYZ)

Question

I am following a tutorial on Django which is basically a series of short todos that lead to the building of a web application to manage bookmarks.

So far I've: - installed Django 1.4.2 properly - created the project and its folders (be low my question is related to that...) - set the database engine (sqlite3) - defined views.py to show a simple message on a webpage (Congrats youve created a webpage...) - defined an entry for the main page in the urls.py. See below:

from django.conf.urls.defaults import *
from bookmarks.views import *
urlpatterns = patterns('',
(r'^$', main_page),
)

so, so f, everything worked like a charm.

Then I had to work on the database. I've:

-created the data model by typing the following in models.py:

from django.db import models

class Link(models.Model):
    url = models.URLField(unique=True)

-defined the INSTALLED APPS in settings.py as follow:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'django.contrib.auth',
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'django.contrib.sessions',
    'django.contrib.sites',
    'django_bookmarks.bookmarks',
)

here's the tricky part. I had to sync the data tables. So I typed:

manage.py syncdb

but I got an error message saying: there is no bookmarks module

So I checked the folder structure and it was as follow

django_bookmarks
├── bookmarks
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── models.py
│   ├── tests.py
│   └── views.py
├── django_bookmarks
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
└── manage.py

So, at that point, I moved the "bookmarks" folder into django_bookmarks (the subfolder one). When I did "syncdb" it worked fine. Then I replaced the "bookmarks" to its original place just like shown on the tree above. So I continue thinking I triumphed...

I then had to work on the data Bookmark Data Model. I followed the tutorial's directive and typed the following in bookmarks/models.py:

from django.contrib.auth.models import User

class Bookmark(models.Model):
    title = models.CharField(maxlength=200)
    user = models.ForeignKey(User)
    link = models.ForeignKey(Link)

To create the table I had to type "manage.py syncdb" again. BUT then comes the error message: no bookmarks module. So I cut-pasted the "bookmarks" folder again in the "django_bookmarks" (the subfolder one) thinking it would work.. but it didnt.. it printed about 17 lines (Python traceback) which line 15 (or 16..) was about models.py (models.CharField(maxlength=200)) and the line in

Python27/lib/site-packages/django/db/models/fields/__init__

and the very last message being:

TypeError: __init__() got an unexpected keyword argument 'maxlength'

I don't see what's wrong. I followed the tutorial (except when I could not sync tables and I resorted to pasting the "bookmarks" folder elsewhere...) ...and the folder tree seems pretty standard. Why it does not find the "bookmark" module?

Any help will do :-) thanks!

Answer 1

there's no maxlength attribute of CharField. but there is max_length. you're missing the underscore

Answer 2

The tutorial may be for an older version, where startapp created the app folder in the project app directory. Now it is created in the project directory (the outer django_bookmarks folder), so your SETTINGS.py should look like:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
     'django.contrib.auth',
     'django.contrib.contenttypes',
     'django.contrib.sessions',
     'django.contrib.sites',
     'bookmarks',
)

Answer 3

Within INSTALLED_APPS, only put bookmarks rather than django_bookmarks.bookmarks. Due to new layout in Django 1.4, I had the same problem a year ago ...