I exported the path of my django project by
$ export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=/Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook/ch3.settings
I run unsuccessfully
$ django-admin.py runserver
Error: Could not import settings '/Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook/ch3.settings' (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): Import by filename is not supported.
How can you start Django server without the error message?
Your $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE should just be set to ch3.settings. Just make sure that the ch3 app is in your $PYTHONPATH, too.
For example, if your app is at /Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook/, then set $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to ch3.settings, and make sure your $PYTHONPATH includes /Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook.
$ export PYTHONPATH=/Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook/
$ export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=ch3.settings
You can also try manage.py.
From your project directory, run
$ python manage.py runserver
Even though it's just a wrapper, manage.py always works for me while django-admin.py doesn't. Obviously we're both doing something wrong (I just got started with Django), but this should get you going at least.
From the django docs on django-admin.py and manage.py:
django-admin.py is Django’s command-line utility for administrative tasks.
In addition, manage.py is automatically created in each Django project. manage.py is a thin wrapper around django-admin.py that takes care of two things for you before delegating to django-admin.py:
- It puts your project’s package on sys.path.
- It sets the
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULEenvironment variable so that it points to your project’s settings.py file.Generally, when working on a single Django project, it’s easier to use manage.py
So, if your directory structure looks like:
djangobook/
ch3/
settings.py
Do the following and you can ignore all DJANGO environment variables (unless you have some really weird install):
$ cd /Users/masi/Documents/Test/djangobook/ch3/
$ python manage.py runserver