Python script to run Django commands

Question

I want to run a python scripts which should do:

1. Create a django project: django-admin startproject foobar
2. Create a app in the project: python manage.py barfoo
3. Add an entry of newly created app barfoo in the setting's INSTALLED_APP .

How can I achieve this?

Answer 1

There seems to be a pythonic way to do #1 and #2

https://docs.djangoproject.com/en/dev/ref/django-admin/#running-management-commands-from-your-code

from django.core import management
management.call_command('flush', verbosity=0, interactive=False)
management.call_command('loaddata', 'test_data', verbosity=0)

Answer 2

Read a little abour subprocess and Popen method. This might be what you're looking for.

1. Popen(["django-admin", "startproject", "%s" % your_name ], stdout=PIPE).communicate()

2. Popen(["python", "manage.py", "%s" % your_app_name ], stdout=PIPE).communicate()

3. I know that's not a perfect code, but I'm just giving an idea.

with open("settings.py", 'r') as file:
    settings = file.readlines()

new_settings = []
for line in settings:
    if "INSTALLED APPS" in line:
        new_settings.append(line.replace("INSTALLED_APPS = (", "INSTALLED_APPS = (\n'%s'," % your_app_name))
    else:
        new_settings.append(line)
with open("settings.py", 'w') as file:
    file.write("".join(new_settings))

Answer 3

6 years later I stumbled upon this question trying to figure out how to write some tests for an app which only add a custom template tag that interact with other apps in the project. Hope this can help someone.

Building on @groovehunter answer: the official documentation now (Django 1.10) inculdes this feature outside dev.

Note that you need to change current directory to the created project before call startapp . See this answer for more details

from django.core import management
import os

management.call_command('startproject', 'foobar')
os.chdir('foobar')
management.call_command('startapp', 'barfoo')

or you can use the additional argumento to startproject to create the project in the current directory, if you're sure there won't be problems:

from django.core import management

management.call_command('startproject', 'foobar', '.')
management.call_command('startapp', 'barfoo')