Where to put standalone-django scripts without breaking imports?

Question

I'm still pretty new to Python.

I have a Django website with several apps and a /libs directory. I need to add a couple cron jobs that will use my Django models. I've already worked all that out, no big deal.

I have a problem with my imports, though.

I would like to include these scripts in the App they generally belong-to. But when I execute the script from the commandline, it's unable to load modules from the /libs directory.

To illustrate specifically the dir structure, imagine this pseudo-code:

import ./../libs/mysharedlib.py   

In other words the scripts and sharedlib are:

~/project/myapp/myscript.py

~/project/libs/mysharedlib.py

I get that I could just add ~/project to my PYTHONPATH but then I have to worry about doing this during deployment and it just feels broken.

Should I move my scripts out of my apps and put them in the ~/project? Is there a better way?

Answer 1

There is a better way, custom management commands solve this. https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/howto/custom-management-commands/

These let you write stand alone utility scripts. You can run these as a cron or just as utilities. They use the exact same paths as any other module in your django app.

While these solve import problems does your libs directory have a __init__.py file? Can you import your lib directory in your views? Or is your import just not working in your cron scripts? Either way custom managment commands address this.