How do I fix my Django ImproperlyConfigured exception?

Question

I've followed installations of Django using pip in a virtualenv since I'm learning Django. When the Django Book told me to type this in the Python shell,

from django import template
t = template.Template("My name is {{ name }}.")

I got this exception. I don't know how to solve this.

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "django/template/base.py", line 123, in __init__
    if settings.TEMPLATE_DEBUG and origin is None:
  File "django/conf/__init__.py", line 53, in __getattr__
    self._setup(name)
  File "django/conf/__init__.py", line 46, in _setup
    % (desc, ENVIRONMENT_VARIABLE))
django.core.exceptions.ImproperlyConfigured: Requested setting TEMPLATE_DEBUG,
but settings are not configured. You must either define the environment variable
DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE or call settings.configure() before accessing settings.

Can somebody walk me through? I'm using Mac OS X 10.8

Answer 1

It seems that you are running python shell using the command python. So the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE variable is not available. Run your application specific python shell using

python manage.py shell

Read more about manage.py.

manage.py sets the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE environment variable so that it points to your project’s settings.py file.

Answer 2

you need to run the django shell so it loads the settings

python manage.py shell