Django run code on application start but not on migrations

Question

Hi I want to start a background thread that runs the first time my Application is running. I have implemeted it using the ready() function of the application config.

class MyappConfig(AppConfig):
    name = 'myApp'
    
    def ready(self):
        try:
            thread = threading.Thread(target=xxxx)
        except:
            pass          

Problem is this method is called when Django runs its migrations as well, which it should not. How can I prevent this from happening.

I have tried using Django background tasks but it simply wont run the task at all

Answer 1

You can avoid executing code if the script is called with "python manage.py [migrate]":

import sys
if not 'manage.py' in sys.argv:
    ....

Answer 2

I found the best way to do it was to check if runserver was in the sys.argv

from django.apps import AppConfig
import sys

class config(AppConfig):
    name = 'appName'
    if 'runserver' in sys.argv:
        do_main_thread()

this works better then manage.py because the argument is in every command i used to migrate, makemigrations and runserver.