How can I correctly set DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE for my Django project (I am using virtualenv)?

Question

I am having some trouble setting the DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE for my Django project.

I have a directory at ~/dev/django-project. In this directory I have a virtual environment which I have set up with virtualenv, and also a django project called "blossom" with an app within it called "onora". Running tree -L 3 from ~/dev/django-project/ shows me the following:

.
├── Procfile
├── blossom
│   ├── __init__.py
│   ├── __init__.pyc
│   ├── fixtures
│   │   └── initial_data_test.yaml
│   ├── manage.py
│   ├── onora
│   │   ├── __init__.py
│   │   ├── __init__.pyc
│   │   ├── admin.py
│   │   ├── admin.pyc
│   │   ├── models.py
│   │   ├── models.pyc
│   │   ├── tests.py
│   │   └── views.py
│   ├── settings.py
│   ├── settings.pyc
│   ├── sqlite3-database
│   ├── urls.py
│   └── urls.pyc
├── blossom-sqlite3-db2
├── requirements.txt
└── virtual_environment
    ├── bin
    │   ├── activate
    │   ├── activate.csh
    │   ├── activate.fish
    │   ├── activate_this.py
    │   ├── django-admin.py
    │   ├── easy_install
    │   ├── easy_install-2.7
    │   ├── gunicorn
    │   ├── gunicorn_django
    │   ├── gunicorn_paster
    │   ├── pip
    │   ├── pip-2.7
    │   ├── python
    │   └── python2.7 -> python
    ├── include
    │   └── python2.7 -> /System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/include/python2.7
    └── lib
        └── python2.7

I am trying to dump my data from the database with the command

django-admin.py dumpdata

My approach is to run cd ~/dev/django-project and then run source virtual_environment/bin/activate and then run django-admin.py dumpdata

However, I am getting the following error:

ImportError: Settings cannot be imported, because environment variable DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE is undefined.

I did some googling and found this page: https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/topics/settings/#designating-the-settings

which tell me that

When you use Django, you have to tell it which settings you're using. Do this by using an environment variable, DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE. The value of DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE should be in Python path syntax, e.g. mysite.settings. Note that the settings module should be on the Python import search path.

Following a suggestion at Setting DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE under virtualenv? I appended the lines

export DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE="blossom.settings"
echo $DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE

to virtual_environment/bin/activate. Now, when I run the activate command in order to activate the virtual environment, I get output reading:

DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE set to blossom.settings

This looks good to me, but now the problem I have is that running

django-admin.py dumpdata

returns the following error:

ImportError: Could not import settings 'blossom.settings' (Is it on sys.path?): No module named blossom.settings

What am I doing wrong? How can I check thesys.path? How is this supposed to work?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Don't run django-admin.py for anything other than the initial project creation. For everything after that, use manage.py, which takes care of the finding the settings.