How to load an object into memory for entire django project to see?

Question

I'd assume it would just be loaded into settings.py, and then the object would just be imported from the settings, but I just wanted to know if there was a more standard or recommended way to do this. Where do people usually load their items that their entire project needs see?

Ex.

# settings.py
...
something_large = json.loads(...)


# whatever models.py, views.py, etc
from Project.settings import something_large  #Is this the proper way to do it?

Thanks.

Answer 1

You could load it in, say, a data module in your app to make it cleaner.

(I'm also showing how to load a file from the same directory a module is in.)

project/
   settings.py
   ...
myapp/
   __init__.py
   data.py
   huge_static_data.json
   models.py
   ...

myapp/data.py:

with file(os.path.join(os.dirname(__file__), "huge_static_data.json")) as in_f:
  something_large = json.load(in_f)

myapp/models.py:

from myapp.data import something_large

Python's import system ensures the data will just be loaded once, when the module is first imported.