Django, how to access request object in settings.py

Question

Is it somehow possible to access the request object inside settings.py? Maybe by creating a temporary settings object, modifying it and then telling the rest of the "chain" to use that instead of the normal settings.py?

I need it to decide which DB-connection to use.

As an extra question. If I were to have something like 5000 database connections, would settings.py be just as efficient as storing them in a sqlite db on the web-frontend? And would it be just as painless to update the connections? Or does the server have to be reloaded to catch the changes in settings.py?

Edit: To clarify why I might be needing that many connections. I am building a webapp. It's SaaS and like many others the accounts will each have a subdomain that they can create users on and will have no need to interact with any other subdomain/account. It would then be nice to confine each account to a DB all of its own. This grants some extra security and simplifies the app. There are many more advantages to it, but this should illustrate it just fine. This is why I might end up with that many different databases (but not that many different physical servers if that makes any difference).

Answer 1

If i understand this right, you could use django's new db-routing system and select database on-the-fly based on model instance (e.g. your user) without the need of using() call.

Answer 2

Just adding this for anyone else looking for the same. It is not currently possible. I have created a feature request on the Django bug-tracker (#13056 i think) and submitted a prototype for a fix, but I don't think it will be included anytime soon and it probably has a lot of bugs in it.

I have moved the project to Flask as it has the g object that is perfectly suited for this.