Moving django apps into subfolder and url.py error

Question

I have a question about putting django apps into "apps" subdirectory. I have the app called “faktura” in a project_root. I didn’t like the fact it lies there and I want to store all my apps under “apps” subdirectory.

So, I found out that I could extend python path to “apps” subdir, so after looking in the internet, I added this string to settings.py: sys.path.insert(0, os.path.join(PROJECT_PATH, "apps")). Then I added the app to INSTALLED_APPS like “faktura”. Everything worked smooth until I added url(r'^faktura/', include('faktura.urls')) to urls.py in the root. Since that, Django throws the error message “No module named faktura” full taceback is here: http://dpaste.com/737380/

What can be wrong here, why only urls.py can’t find the app? And does it can’t find this app if I added it to the PATH? I spent a morning trying to figure out what’s wrong and now I need your help.

Answer 1

I don't know why the previous answer got -1 aside from maybe a few redundant lines that can be corrected. Anyway, I found a slightly different method that doesn't involve adding anything to the python path.

This is my final directory structure, I will explain in a moment:

mysite
├── mysite
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── wsgi.py
├── apps
│   ├── __init__.py
│   └── myfirstapp
│       ├── __init__.py
│       ├── admin.py
│       ├── models.py
│       ├── tests.py
│       └── views.py
└── manage.py

No matter if you have just created your project or if you want to move your apps, create the apps subdirectory that should contain your apps. The trick is to add an __init__.py to that directory.

mkdir apps
touch apps/__init__.py

Now you can move your existing apps into the apps subdirectory. If you would like to create a new one instead here are the commands:

python manage.py mysecondapp
mv mysecondapp apps/

Warning: Don't be tempted to call python manage.py ./apps/mysecondapp. For some reason this deletes all other apps in that directory. I just lost a day of work this way.

Next, you will need to fix a few imports. Your settings.py should be prefixed with apps:

INSTALLED_APPS = (
    ...
    'apps.myfirstapp',
    'apps.mysecondapp'
)

Lastly, fix your project's urls.py to prefix apps:

urlpatterns = patterns('', 
  url(r'^myfirstapp', include('apps.myfirstapp.urls')),
  ...
)

Depending on how you wrote them, you might also have to fix a few imports inside your app. Either just use from models import MyFirstModel or also prefix it using from apps.myfirstapp.models import MyFirstModel.

In short, if you make your apps directory a python package (by adding __init__.py), you can use it as part of the import path. This should work regardless of the deployment method with no extra configuration.