django-modular-settings

Inspired during DjangoCon 2011. After creating six projects to test during the talks, I realized that setting up the settings.py file to be more modular was a real pain. I wrote this little script to automate the process.

Quick Overview

Django's default way of doing settings kind of sucks. Adding:

try:
  from local_settings import *
except ImportError:
  pass

to the bottom of the settings.py works, but it doesn't allow you to extend settings. So, for example, you can't add django-debug-toolbar to just your local development without overriding the entire INSTALLED_APPS tuple.

What this script does:

1. Read in your current settings.
2. Creates a new folder named settings within the project directory.
3. Writes your current settings to base.py within the new settings package.
4. Creates a basic __init__.py file which imports base.py and looks for local.py
5. Creates an empty local.py for your dev environment.
6. Deletes the default settings.py (and settings.pyc, should it exist).

What You Get

Now you can edit local.py for your dev environment and extend things like INSTALLED_APPS but just for you.

INSTALLED_APPS += (
  'debug_toolbar',
)

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES += (
  'debug_toolbar.middleware.DebugToolbarMiddleware',
)

INTERNAL_IPS = ('127.0.0.1',)

Installation

This is a simple script that does not need to be installed or compiled. It's a run-once-and-discard project. You will want to curl or wget the modular_settings.py file to your project directory. Specifically to the directory where the default Django settings.py file resides.

curl -O https://raw.github.com/chrisjones-brack3t/django-modular-settings/master/modular_settings.py

Or, if you prefer wget:

wget https://raw.github.com/chrisjones-brack3t/django-modular-settings/master/modular_settings.py

Usage

After downloading the file, run the script from your project directory.

python modular_settings.py

Assuming everything goes as planned, you should see a message saying your settings are now a little more awesome.

Finally

Delete the modular_settings.py file.