Django: Global settings variables

Question

Suppose I have some global settings for my Django project, stored in a text file for easy editing. I want to load the settings, and then store these variables such that they are accessible from any of my view functions. However, I have read that global variables in Django are discouraged. So, how should I do it? I know how to store these variables in a database, but this seems overkill just for storing a few simple variables.

Answer 1

As alecxe has already pointed out, you can use the settings system. This is the customary way to set values that must be used project-wide. If you read the documentation I've linked too you'll see that they cover very early on that page how to set your own settings.

One thing you must not do when you use Django's settings system is refer to settings at the top level of your modules. For instance if you have a view that does this:

from django.conf import settings

FOO = settings.FOO

(Or alecxe's print statement.) This will prevent values from being overriden. The documentation here goes over the details. I recall having had problems in testing due to this because some of my tests were trying to override the default values, and failed.

The settings system I've mentioned above should be used for values that are meant to be set at start up and not changed afterwards. If you want to record settings that can be changed by the site's administrator at run time, you should use a database of some sort.

Answer 2

Just store your variables in settings.py, this is the best and preferrable way to store your project-specific settings. Then, you can always access them by importing django.conf.settings:

from django.conf import settings

print settings.MY_SETTING

Hope that helps.