django-data-seed

Fill your entire Django database with realistic, valid test data — in one command, with zero configuration.

Every Django project hits the same wall: you need data to build against. So you click through the admin for twenty minutes, or hand-write fixtures, or maintain a factory for every single model — and you still end up with test test and a@a.com everywhere, which makes demos look fake and lets real bugs hide.

django-data-seed does it for you. Point it at your project and it reads your models, works out the right order to fill them, generates believable data that respects every field's rules, and bulk-inserts the lot — in seconds.

pip install django-data-seed
python manage.py seeddata --count 20 --seed 42

Pre-flight
  ✔ Database: postgresql (JSON ✓, bulk-returns-pk ✓)
  ✔ Migrations: all applied
  ✔ Schema: 14 models in sync
Seed plan — 20 rows per model
├── shop.Author
├── shop.Publisher
└── shop.Book
✨ 280 rows across 14 models in 0.4s (seed 42)

That's the whole thing. No factories, no fixtures, no configuration.

Features

Supported versions

Every push is tested on GitHub Actions across Python 3.10–3.13 × Django 4.0–5.2 on SQLite, PostgreSQL, and MySQL — the CI badge above is the live proof.

Dependencies

Installing the package pulls in just three small runtime dependencies:

Database drivers are optional extras, so you only install what you use:

pip install django-data-seed              # core — SQLite works out of the box
pip install django-data-seed[postgres]    # PostgreSQL (psycopg)
pip install django-data-seed[mysql]       # MySQL & MariaDB (mysqlclient)

How to configure it in your project

Three steps — that's the entire setup.

1. Install

pip install django-data-seed

2. Add it to INSTALLED_APPS

# settings.py
INSTALLED_APPS = [
    # ...
    "django_data_seed",
]

3. Seed

python manage.py seeddata --count 20 --seed 42

Using it

python manage.py seeddata                      # every model, 10 rows each
python manage.py seeddata shop.Book --count 50 # just one model
python manage.py seeddata --dry-run            # preview the plan, write nothing
python manage.py seeddata --locale de_DE       # localised data

Or from Python — handy in scripts and tests:

from django_data_seed import seed

seed("shop.Book", count=50, seed=42)   # reproducible
seed(count=25)                         # the whole project

📖 Full documentation

The README is the quick tour. For the complete guide — every CLI flag, the Python API, how foreign-key strategies and coherence work, custom overrides, and the 0.4 → 1.0 migration notes — see the docs:

• Documentation: https://rohith-baggam.github.io/django-data-seed/
• Source & issues: https://github.com/rohith-baggam/django-data-seed

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please open an issue or submit a pull request for any changes.

Support

For any issues or questions, open an issue on the GitHub repository.

Author

Rohith Baggam

LinkedIn · GitHub