how to handle common code in a django project which is used by multiple apps

Question

diving deeper into django I came across the challenge to handle code which is not specific to 1 app but is shared/used by multiple apps.

I would not(!) like to store it as part of an app (to avoid app dependencies) but to have it in a specific place.

currently my best practice is to create a django app "shared" in which I place this code/functionality

so my project structure looks similar to this:

mysite/
    manage.py
    mysite/
     ...
    shared
     ...
    app1
     ...
    app2
     ...
    app3
     ...
    ...

is there a "django best parctice" or a more practical way how to handle this?

Answer 1

I usually do exact same thing what you are doing. Not sure if that is best practice however I've seen other people using the same approach. I like it because:

• when the shared/core/etc app becomes useful in other projects, you can package it as reusable app which can be installed via pip in other projects
• it does not interfere with existing apps in the project

The only note about packaging it as a reusable lib is that I would recommend to rename it to something other then shared. The reasons is that when you package it in PyPI lets say as my_django_utils, then you will have to change all your imports in all the projects. If you come up with a generic name now, then you can easily package it in the future without needing to change all your imports...