Django documentation

Django settings

A Django settings file contains all the configuration of your Django installation. This document explains how settings work and which settings are available.

The basics

A settings file is just a Python module with module-level variables.

Here are a couple of example settings:

DEBUG = False
DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL = 'webmaster@example.com'
TEMPLATE_DIRS = ('/home/templates/mike', '/home/templates/john')

Because a settings file is a Python module, the following apply:

  • It shouldn't have Python syntax errors.

  • It can assign settings dynamically using normal Python syntax. For example:

    MY_SETTING = [str(i) for i in range(30)]

  • It can import values from other settings files.

Designating the settings

When you use Django, you have to tell it which settings you're using. Do this by using an environment variable, DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE.

The value of DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE should be in Python path syntax, e.g. "myproject.settings". Note that the settings module should be on the Python import search path.

The django-admin.py utility

When using django-admin.py, you can either set the environment variable once, or explicitly pass in the settings module each time you run the utility.

Example (Unix Bash shell):

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings
django-admin.py runserver

Example (Windows shell):

set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE=myproject.settings
django-admin.py runserver

Use the --settings command-line argument to specify the settings manually:

django-admin.py runserver --settings=myproject.settings

On the server (mod_python)

In your live server environment, you'll need to tell Apache/mod_python which settings file to use. Do that with SetEnv:

<Location "/mysite/">
    SetHandler python-program
    PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
    SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE myproject.settings
</Location>

Read the Django mod_python documentation for more information.

Default settings

A Django settings file doesn't have to define any settings if it doesn't need to. Each setting has a sensible default value. These defaults live in the file django/conf/global_settings.py.

Here's the algorithm Django uses in compiling settings:

  • Load settings from global_settings.py.
  • Load settings from the specified settings file, overriding the global settings as necessary.

Note that a settings file should not import from global_settings, because that's redundant.

Using settings in Python code

In your Django apps, use settings by importing them from django.conf.settings. Example:

from django.conf.settings import DEBUG

if DEBUG:
    # Do something

Note that your code should not import from either global_settings or your own settings file. django.conf.settings abstracts the concepts of default settings and site-specific settings; it presents a single interface.

Altering settings at runtime

You shouldn't alter settings in your applications at runtime. For example, don't do this in a view:

from django.conf.settings import DEBUG

DEBUG = True   # Don't do this!

The only place you should assign to settings is in a settings file.

Security

Because a settings file contains sensitive information, such as the database password, you should make every attempt to limit access to it. For example, change its file permissions so that only you and your Web server's user can read it. This is especially important in a shared-hosting environment.

Available settings

Here's a full list of all available settings, in alphabetical order, and their default values.

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES

Default: {} (Empty dictionary)

A dictionary mapping "app_label.module_name" strings to functions that take a model object and return its URL. This is a way of overriding get_absolute_url() methods on a per-installation basis. Example:

ABSOLUTE_URL_OVERRIDES = {
    'blogs.blogs': lambda o: "/blogs/%s/" % o.slug,
    'news.stories': lambda o: "/stories/%s/%s/" % (o.pub_year, o.slug),
}

ADMIN_FOR

Default: () (Empty list)

Used for admin-site settings modules, this should be a tuple of settings modules (in the format 'foo.bar.baz') for which this site is an admin.

ADMIN_MEDIA_PREFIX

Default: '/media/'

The URL prefix for admin media -- CSS, JavaScript and images. Make sure to use a trailing slash.

ADMINS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple that lists people who get code error notifications. When DEBUG=False and a view raises an exception, Django will e-mail these people with the full exception information. Each member of the tuple should be a tuple of (Full name, e-mail address). Example:

(('John', 'john@example.com'), ('Mary', 'mary@example.com'))

ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of strings representing allowed prefixes for the {% ssi %} template tag. This is a security measure, so that template authors can't access files that they shouldn't be accessing.

For example, if ALLOWED_INCLUDE_ROOTS is ('/home/html', '/var/www'), then {% ssi /home/html/foo.txt %} would work, but {% ssi /etc/passwd %} wouldn't.

APPEND_SLASH

Default: True

Whether to append trailing slashes to URLs. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see the middleware docs). See also PREPEND_WWW.

CACHE_BACKEND

Default: 'simple://'

The cache backend to use. See the cache docs.

CACHE_MIDDLEWARE_KEY_PREFIX

Default: '' (Empty string)

The cache key prefix that the cache middleware should use. See the cache docs.

DATABASE_ENGINE

Default: 'postgresql'

Which database backend to use. Either 'postgresql', 'mysql', 'sqlite3' or 'ado_mssql'.

DATABASE_HOST

Default: '' (Empty string)

Which host to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means localhost. Not used with SQLite.

DATABASE_NAME

Default: '' (Empty string)

The name of the database to use. For SQLite, it's the full path to the database file.

DATABASE_PASSWORD

Default: '' (Empty string)

The password to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

DATABASE_PORT

Default: '' (Empty string)

The port to use when connecting to the database. An empty string means the default port. Not used with SQLite.

DATABASE_USER

Default: '' (Empty string)

The username to use when connecting to the database. Not used with SQLite.

DATE_FORMAT

Default: 'N j, Y' (e.g. Feb. 4, 2003)

The default formatting to use for date fields on Django admin change-list pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATETIME_FORMAT and TIME_FORMAT.

DATETIME_FORMAT

Default: 'N j, Y, P' (e.g. Feb. 4, 2003, 4 p.m.)

The default formatting to use for datetime fields on Django admin change-list pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT and TIME_FORMAT.

DEBUG

Default: False

A boolean that turns on/off debug mode.

DEFAULT_CHARSET

Default: 'utf-8'

Default charset to use for all HttpResponse objects, if a MIME type isn't manually specified. Used with DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE to construct the Content-Type header.

DEFAULT_CONTENT_TYPE

Default: 'text/html'

Default content type to use for all HttpResponse objects, if a MIME type isn't manually specified. Used with DEFAULT_CHARSET to construct the Content-Type header.

DEFAULT_FROM_EMAIL

Default: 'webmaster@localhost'

Default e-mail address to use for various automated correspondence from the site manager(s).

DISALLOWED_USER_AGENTS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

List of compiled regular expression objects representing User-Agent strings that are not allowed to visit any page, systemwide. Use this for bad robots/crawlers. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see the middleware docs).

EMAIL_HOST

Default: 'localhost'

The host to use for sending e-mail.

EMAIL_SUBJECT_PREFIX

Default: '[Django] '

Subject-line prefix for e-mail messages sent with django.core.mail.mail_admins or django.core.mail.mail_managers. You'll probably want to include the trailing space.

IGNORABLE_404_ENDS

Default: ('mail.pl', 'mailform.pl', 'mail.cgi', 'mailform.cgi', 'favicon.ico', '.php')

See also IGNORABLE_404_STARTS.

IGNORABLE_404_STARTS

Default: ('/cgi-bin/', '/_vti_bin', '/_vti_inf')

A tuple of strings that specify beginnings of URLs that should be ignored by the 404 e-mailer. See SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS and IGNORABLE_404_ENDS.

INSTALLED_APPS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of strings designating all applications that are enabled in this Django installation. Each string should be a full Python path to a Python package that contains a Django application, as created by django-admin.py startapp.

INTERNAL_IPS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

A tuple of IP addresses, as strings, that:

  • See debug comments, when DEBUG is True
  • Receive X headers if the XViewMiddleware is installed (see the middleware docs)

JING_PATH

Default: '/usr/bin/jing'

Path to the "Jing" executable. Jing is a RELAX NG validator, and Django uses it to validate each XMLField in your models. See http://www.thaiopensource.com/relaxng/jing.html .

LANGUAGE_CODE

Default: 'en-us'

A string representing the language code for this installation. This should be in standard language format. For example, U.S. English is "en-us". See the internationalization docs.

LANGUAGES

Default: A tuple of all available languages. Currently, this is:

LANGUAGES = (
    ('bn', _('Bengali')),
    ('cs', _('Czech')),
    ('cy', _('Welsh')),
    ('da', _('Danish')),
    ('de', _('German')),
    ('en', _('English')),
    ('es', _('Spanish')),
    ('fr', _('French')),
    ('gl', _('Galician')),
    ('is', _('Icelandic')),
    ('it', _('Italian')),
    ('no', _('Norwegian')),
    ('pt-br', _('Brazilian')),
    ('ro', _('Romanian')),
    ('ru', _('Russian')),
    ('sk', _('Slovak')),
    ('sr', _('Serbian')),
    ('sv', _('Swedish')),
    ('zh-cn', _('Simplified Chinese')),
)

A tuple of two-tuples in the format (language code, language name). This specifies which languages are available for language selection. See the internationalization docs for details.

Generally, the default value should suffice. Only set this setting if you want to restrict language selection to a subset of the Django-provided languages.

MANAGERS

Default: ADMINS (Whatever ADMINS is set to)

A tuple in the same format as ADMINS that specifies who should get broken-link notifications when SEND_BROKEN_LINK_EMAILS=True.

MEDIA_ROOT

Default: '' (Empty string)

Absolute path to the directory that holds media for this installation. Example: "/home/media/media.lawrence.com/" See also MEDIA_URL.

MEDIA_URL

Default: '' (Empty string)

URL that handles the media served from MEDIA_ROOT. Example: "http://media.lawrence.com"

MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES

Default:

("django.middleware.sessions.SessionMiddleware",
 "django.middleware.common.CommonMiddleware",
 "django.middleware.doc.XViewMiddleware")

A tuple of middleware classes to use. See the middleware docs.

PREPEND_WWW

Default: False

Whether to prepend the "www." subdomain to URLs that don't have it. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see the middleware docs). See also APPEND_SLASH.

SECRET_KEY

Default: '' (Empty string)

A secret key for this particular Django installation. Used to provide a seed in secret-key hashing algorithms. Set this to a random string -- the longer, the better. django-admin.py startproject creates one automatically.

SERVER_EMAIL

Default: 'root@localhost'

The e-mail address that error messages come from, such as those sent to ADMINS and MANAGERS.

SESSION_SAVE_EVERY_REQUEST

Default: False

Whether to save the session data on every request. See the session docs.

SITE_ID

Default: Not defined

The ID, as an integer, of the current site in the sites database. This is used so that application data can hook into specific site(s) and a single database can manage content for multiple sites.

TEMPLATE_DEBUG

Default: False

Only available in Django development version.

A boolean that turns on/off template debug mode. If this is True, the fancy error page will display a detailed report for any TemplateSyntaxError. This report contains the relevant snippet of the template, with the appropriate line highlighted.

Note that Django only displays fancy error pages if DEBUG is True, so you'll want to set that to take advantage of this setting.

See also DEBUG.

TEMPLATE_DIRS

Default: () (Empty tuple)

List of locations of the template source files, in search order. See the template documentation.

TEMPLATE_FILE_EXTENSION

Default: '.html'

The file extension to append to all template names when searching for templates. See the template documentation.

TEMPLATE_LOADERS

Default: ('django.core.template.loaders.filesystem.load_template_source',)

A tuple of callables (as strings) that know how to import templates from various sources. See the template documentation.

TIME_FORMAT

Default: 'P' (e.g. 4 p.m.)

The default formatting to use for time fields on Django admin change-list pages -- and, possibly, by other parts of the system. See allowed date format strings.

See also DATE_FORMAT and DATETIME_FORMAT.

TIME_ZONE

Default: 'America/Chicago'

A string representing the time zone for this installation. See available choices.

Note that this is the time zone to which Django will convert all dates/times -- not necessarily the timezone of the server. For example, one server may serve multiple Django-powered sites, each with a separate time-zone setting.

USE_ETAGS

Default: False

A boolean that specifies whether to output the "Etag" header. This saves bandwidth but slows down performance. This is only used if CommonMiddleware is installed (see the middleware docs).

Creating your own settings

There's nothing stopping you from creating your own settings, for your own Django apps. Just follow these conventions:

  • Setting names are in all uppercase.
  • For settings that are sequences, use tuples instead of lists. This is purely for performance.
  • Don't reinvent an already-existing setting.

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