While trying to set up Django on Windows: AttributeError: 'Settings' object has no attribute 'DATABASES'

Question

I'm following these instructions in order to set up Django on Windows. I have installed Python 2.6, PostgreSQL 8.4, Psycopg 2.0.14 for Python 2.6 and the latest version of Django from SVN.

I'm now following these instructions to run a test project (copied from the page linked to above):

C:\Documents and Settings\John>cd C:\
C:\>mkdir django
C:\>cd django
C:\django>django-admin.py startproject testproject
C:\django>cd testproject
C:\django\testproject>python manage.py runserver

When I run the last line, this is the output:

Validating models...
Unhandled exception in thread started by <function inner_run at 0x01ECB930>
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "J:\Python26\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\commands\runserver.py", line 48, in inn
er_run
    self.validate(display_num_errors=True)
  File "J:\Python26\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\base.py", line 249, in validate
    num_errors = get_validation_errors(s, app)
  File "J:\Python26\lib\site-packages\django\core\management\validation.py", line 22, in get_validat
ion_errors
    from django.db import models, connection
  File "J:\Python26\lib\site-packages\django\db\__init__.py", line 14, in <module>
    if not settings.DATABASES:
  File "J:\Python26\lib\site-packages\django\utils\functional.py", line 273, in __getattr__
    return getattr(self._wrapped, name)
AttributeError: 'Settings' object has no attribute 'DATABASES'

Did I forget to do something with the database?

Any help will be appreciated. Thank you!

Answer 1

Did you remember to run manage.py syncdb?

Answer 2

The SVN checkout version of Django is looking for a setting like this in settings.py:

DATABASES = {
    'default': {
        'ENGINE': 'django.db.backends.sqlite3',
        'NAME': 'mydatabase'
    }
}

This is slightly different than the way it's shown in the Django book and many tutorials.

Checkout the online doc.

Answer 3

Seems like all my problems (including this one) were caused because I used the development version of Django from SVN. I removed the development version and installed Django 1.1.1, and finally there are no more strange error messages and the server is running!