django-confit 0.5

Django settings loaders and validators, with local flavour.

django-confit eases Django configuration management.

As a Django user, in order to configure a project:

• django-confit helps you load the settings wherever they are, whatever the format: Python modules, environment variables, JSON, YAML…
• django-confit validates the settings, i.e. it tells you if some directive is missing, has wrong format…

As a Django library developer, in order to help your application’s users:

• you write configuration schemas for your application, using django-confit’s toolkit and conventions.
• django-confit helps you document your application’s specific configuration.

As a non Django user, in order to deploy and run a Django-powered project:

• you write the configuration as you like, depending on your workflow and your provisioning toolkit. You know the project can load them using django-confit.
• you expect applications to validate the configuration before they actually use it, and report errors with a readable output.

Example

In a project’s settings.py file, let’s load configuration from various locations:

import os

import django_confit

# Load settings.
raw_settings = {}
raw_settings.update(django_confit.load_module('myproject.default_settings'))
raw_settings.update(django_confit.load_file(open('/etc/myproject.json')))
raw_settings.update(django_confit.load_mapping(os.environ, prefix='MYPROJECT_')

# Update globals, because that's the way Django uses DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE.
globals().update(raw_settings)

Optionally, you can use builtin schemas to validate settings:

# Validate and clean settings.
cleaned_settings = django_confit.validate_settings(raw_settings)

# Update globals, because that's the way Django uses DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE.
globals().update(cleaned_settings)

Warning

At the moment, there is no builtin schema for latest Django>=1.7.

Project status

Today, django-confit is a proof of concept:

• loading settings is nice and easy.
• validating configuration is easy… provided you have the schemas.
• creating configuration schemas is verbose. It uses colander which has nice features, but may not be the definitive option.
• generating documentation from schemas is not implemented.

The main limitation is that, when you use validation, schemas are mandatory. If some configuration directive is not registered in a schema, it will not be present in validation output. It means that, if you install a new third-party Django application, you need the configuration schema for this application, else its settings will not pass validation. So the most-wanted contribution is submitting configuration schemas for third-party applications.

Notice that this behaviour is a wanted feature. As django-confit author, I think libraries should always provide a schema for the settings they use. I do not pretend django-confit should be THE answer. I just bet that, if schemas were widely adopted by the Django community, configuration would be easier to manage.

django-confit does not pretend to be the ultimate configuration management app for Django. Its goal is to show how some issues could be resolved, and to highlight the benefits. django-confit is a proposal. If you like its concepts, then you can:

• use django-confit of course!
• discuss, spread the word, send feedback.
• improve code. Help around configuration schemas of third-party apps would be appreciated.

Ressources

• Documentation: https://django-confit.readthedocs.org
• PyPI page: https://pypi.python.org/pypi/django-confit/
• Code repository: https://github.com/benoitbryon/django-confit
• Bugtracker: https://github.com/benoitbryon/django-confit/issues
• Continuous integration: https://travis-ci.org/benoitbryon/django-confit
• Roadmap: https://github.com/benoitbryon/django-confit/milestones