import django module

Question

Hello

I am trying to import from django.http import HttpResponse, but I am getting the following exception:

ImportError: Settings cannot be imported, because environment variable
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined.

Could anyone help me please?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

Django uses an environment variable named DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE to figure out where the global configuration file is. DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE must refer to a Python module that contains your configuration settings, and this module must be on the Python path. If you don't want to use a global configuration module for whatever reason, you have to call settings.configure from django.conf before using any Django code that uses settings:

from django.conf import settings

settings.configure(DEBUG=True, TEMPLATE_DEBUG=True,
                   TEMPLATE_DIRS=('/home/web-apps/myapp',
                       '/home/web-apps/base'))

More information is to be found in the Django docs.

Answer 2

If you want to use Django from a (say) Python script, you have to setup the settings module as you said.

Another way of doing, is as follow:

#!/usr/bin/python
from django.core.management import setup_environ
import os
import settings

os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = "mysite.settings" # or just "settings" if it's on the same directory as settings.py

from mysite.myapp.models import * # import models, etc, only *after* setting up the settings module

setup_environ(settings)

# insert your code here, say saving an entry

c = MyClass()
c.text = "Hello!"
c.save()