How to define a default value for a custom Django setting

Question

The Django documentation mentions that you can add your own settings to django.conf.settings. So if my project's settings.py defines

APPLES = 1

I can access that with settings.APPLES in my apps in that project.

But if my settings.py doesn't define that value, accessing settings.APPLES obviously won't work. Is there some way to define a default value for APPLES that is used if there is no explicit setting in settings.py?

I'd like best to define the default value in the module/package that requires the setting.

Answer 1

In my apps, I have a seperate settings.py file. In that file I have a get() function that does a look up in the projects settings.py file and if not found returns the default value.

from django.conf import settings

def get(key, default):
    return getattr(settings, key, default)


APPLES = get('APPLES', 1)

Then where I need to access APPLES I have:

from myapp import settings as myapp_settings

myapp_settings.APPLES

This allows an override in the projects settings.py, getattr will check there first and return the value if the attribute is found or use the default defined in your apps settings file.