How to keep all my django applications in specific folder

Question

I have a Django project, let's say "project1". Typical folder structure for applications is:

/project1/
         /app1/
         /app2/
         ...
         __init__.py
         manage.py
         settings.py
         urls.py

What should I do if I want to hold all of my applications in some separate folder, 'apps' for example? So that structure should look like the following:

/project/
         apps/
              app1/
              app2/
              ...
         __init__.py
         manage.py
         settings.py
         urls.py

Answer 1

You can do this very easily, but you need to change the settings.py to look like this:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    'apps.app1',
    'apps.app2',
    # ...
)

And your urls.py to look like this:

urlpatterns = patterns('', 
    (r'^app1/',include('apps.app1')),    
    (r'^app2/',include('apps.app2')),    
)

.. and modify any imports to point to the app location

Answer 2

You can add your apps folder to your python path by inserting the following in your settings.py:

import os
import sys

PROJECT_ROOT = os.path.dirname(__file__)
sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(PROJECT_ROOT, 'apps'))

Then you can use all the apps in this folder just in the same way as they were in your project root!