how to execute python script containing django functions

Question

I have a python script test.py that imports make_password function from Django library. It does it like this:

from django.contrib.auth.hashers import make_password
.... a lot of other stuff
def init():
 ...
if __name__ == "__main__":
 init()

So, I want to run it from the command line like:

python test.py

But this results in a whole list of error messages, which are all about importing Django module. If I comment out from django.contrib.auth.hashers import make_password, then everything is ok (except the fact that I can't use make_password function).

Answer 1

The error messages your are getting are most likely complaints that the settings module is not available.

Django initializes its runtime environment (via django.core.management.setup_environ()) when you import any of its core modules. The django ecosystem is not meant to function without a valid project environment.

You have at least two options:

1. Manually set django settings module

import os
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'yourapp.settings'
from django.contrib.auth.hashers import make_password
...

Note that this requires yourapp.settings to be available via sys.path, so it might be necessary to explicitly add the project path to sys.path (or PYTHON_PATH).

Other versions of basically the same thing are available.

2. Build a management command

This is explained in some detail in the documentation.

In principle, you need to provide a yourapp.management.mycommand module that contains a single Command class:

class Command(BaseCommand):
 def handle(self, *args, **options):
 # make_password()

The command can be run through django's manage.py.

• Jacobian: One tiny question is how to set yourapp.settings. I have a project proj1 and I have an application called accent (they are in the same folder). So, how should I specify yourapp.settings? Should it be proj1.settings or accent.settings or should I use the full path to the application (or the project?)
• Jacobian: Well, in both cases - I tried proj1.settings and accent.settings - I get an error No module name proj1.settings or No module named accent.settings, respectively. So, there should be some magic with how to set 'DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'
• dhke: You use the project's settings module, i.e. proj1.settings. Also, the project module needs to be available via Python's module path. You might need to add the project's root directory to sys.path (or PYTHON_PATH) if the script is not at the root of the project directory.